


The Cry of the Chained

by Pelandreth



Series: The Wanderer’s Road [3]
Category: Kenshi (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 07:56:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 63,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20503508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pelandreth/pseuds/Pelandreth
Summary: In the mountains, a team of scientists unknowingly harbour a fugitive. In the river-lands, a girl sits in a cage and awaits her fate. In the desert, an emperor watches his playthings and plans his next move.The world is cruel. And it’s about to get crueller.





	1. Caged

Conscience was a terrible thing.

It had driven him forward, pushing at him from behind, whispering obscenities in his ear. It was all Ceras had been able to hear for the past eleven hours, as he’d crossed dunes and carefully planned his route around the distant forms of skimmers hoping for a late-night meal. The honour he had turned his back on for so long had returned, watching angrily from the shadows and bristling whenever he thought about resting. He had stopped twice on the Skimsands, and both times had only managed a few short minutes’ respite before urgency pressed him forward.

There had once been a walk like this one, in another lifetime. A solitary walk of hatred that had burned as fiercely as the farm had done, as behind him, the sand had blown over Launa and Eira’s empty eyes. Sometimes, those eyes accused Ceras. _Why didn’t you save us? Why_ couldn’t _you save us?_ Only now, the eyes were joined by a pair of glowing Scorchlander eyes that told emotions Ceras couldn’t read.

The girl. Whoever she was, and whatever she had really done to earn the wrath of the nobles, she was in danger. And alone, most likely. Ceras had seen no-one else on that ridge, and when they had moved their two captives on towards the Vault, he was sure he’d seen a solitary figure hurrying away across the dunes. At least she had fled, though Ceras had no idea if she’d even made as far as Okran’s Shield.

The sands, ghostly in the pale moonlight, shifted and stirred with the wind. There was currently no sign of the skimmers or whatever rogues and miscreants wandered the desert at night, and the only sound was the soft sighs of the breeze as it lifted Ceras’s hair and lightly dusted his clothes with sand. He shivered; his shirt was still damp with sweat from before the temperatures had dropped, and his armour offered surprisingly little protection against the cold.

In the distance, Ceras could just make out the lights of Okran’s Shield. A few short days before, one of their patrols had attacked Ceras’s group not far from where Ceras was now. He hoped they wouldn’t recognise him as the man who’d been travelling with a Shek and a woman they’d mistaken for a Skeleton in disguise.

Former sword for hire, ex-bounty hunter, traitor to the United Cities. Ceras wasn’t keen to add _Skeleton sympathiser_ to the list. Luckily, it was still dark as he reached Okran’s Shield, and the rocky outcrops that surrounded the Holy Nation outpost cast shadows across his face. The paladins greeted him curiously, surprised to see a traveller arriving in town so late at night, but there was no suspicion in their voices.

“Divine blessings, brother.”

As mistrustful as he was of religion, having recently been exposed to a particularly Okranite brand of zealotry, Ceras returned the greeting in as neutral a tone as he could muster. His thick desert accent earned him some raised eyebrows, but as his mercenary armour had no markings of a United Cities uniform, they had no reason to stop him passing through. One of the paladins waved a hand. “Go on.”

“Uh, actually, I got a question. Have you seen a girl pass through this way? Woulda been in the last day or so.”

“We haven’t had any women through here recently,” someone said. “In fact, it’s been pretty quiet, I’d have said. Hasn’t it, Sil?”

“I mean, we saw that young man.”

“Yes, brother, but he’s asking about a _woman.”_

Ceras’s ears pricked up at that. The girl’s hair had been short. “He weren’t a Scorchlander by any chance, was he?”

“A Scorchlander, yeah. Didn’t sound like one of your lot, nor any Holy Nation citizen I ever heard. Don’t know where he came from, though. Couldn’t place the accent.”

“Is he about? Can I talk to him?”

“Oh,” said Sil, “you missed him. Said he wanted to go to Blister Hill. We sent him off with a patrol heading westwards.”

“I see. Thanks.”

“If you’re planning on catching up with him,” Sil called as Ceras turned, “I’d advise doing it in the light. These parts are safer than most, but there are still raptors and bonedog packs.”

Ceras considered for a moment. “There an inn here?”

“No, brother, but you’re more than welcome to sleep within our walls.”

In the end, exhaustion won out over a desire to keep moving. He spent a few uncomfortable hours dozing in the shadow of the barracks, but awoke feeling no more refreshed. It was the tail end of the night, with morning not far away, and the sky was beginning to lighten over the desert. Ceras pulled on his boots and left the gates, waving aside the paladins’ offers to send a patrol with him.

“I’ll be fine. Got, uh, Okran looking out for me, right?”

“Well, can’t argue with that. Safe travels, roamer. Make sure you keep to the paths around these parts. You wouldn’t want to drift into the Iron Valleys by mistake.”

The Iron Valleys lay just to the south; indeed, the path that led to Blister Hill seemed to form the main boundary between danger and relative safety. One look at the distant bolts of lightning coming from that direction told Ceras the paladin’s advice was sound. The air was tense with static, and he could feel it tingling on his metal armour and the hairs on the backs of his forearms. It began to drizzle, and for one awful moment he wondered if it was the acid rain the Iron Valleys were famed for, but it soothed his sunburnt skin rather than dissolve it. Still, the rain didn’t smell quite right, and Ceras was glad when he’d left the poisoned, lightning-struck lands well in the distance.

The early morning sky was greyish-blue in colour, still dotted with stars, but there was a damp haze to it that Ceras was entirely unused to. The river-lands were a world away from the dusty, arid desert, and the gently rolling sea of green from the fertile valleys was far easier on the eyes than the glaring expanses of endless sand.

It was a pity that Kuto and Marisa couldn’t have shared in the view. Everyone knew that Shek were prone to disappear in Holy Nation territory, and Ceras had already seen how the Okranites had treated Marisa, just for having a Skeleton limb. He wondered if either of his former companions would miss him. Probably not. Kuto had only tolerated Ceras’s presence insofar as their circumstances had forced them together, and Marisa… Marisa was a strange one. She was a victim of the nobility as much as Ceras was, only she’d willingly gone back to a mistress who’d treated her like shit. Ceras wished he could have helped her.

One of the little river-land farms loomed ahead of Ceras, dotted with people going about their daily lives. Ceras stopped to watch despite himself. They were up on a hill and he was down in the valley, but he could just make out the shapes of a man and a woman, tending the fields while a small child herded the cattle away from the crops. He had no idea if the man and woman were husband and wife, or indeed if the child was theirs, but it stirred memories regardless. For a fleeting moment the green, fertile farm was replaced by a dusty smallholding growing cactuses, and the small child shaking a stick at the cattle yelled with Eira’s voice.

They’d been poor. Peasants, really, and whilst they’d been able to live off the land, it had always been a struggle scraping enough cats together to pay the taxes. There had been occasions when Launa and Ceras had gone hungry just to make sure they had enough to take to market in Heft. But they’d had each other when times grew hard, and their poverty-stricken existence had been far better than anything that had followed.

Sixteen years. Whoever had said time healed all wounds, Ceras reflected bitterly, was a liar. He turned his back on the farm and stomped through the tall river-grasses, trying to tune out the child’s giggles.

“It’s licking me! Hey, stop that!”

“It’s licking you because you have food in your pockets. Go on, take the cattle down to pasture. And stay away from the raptors.”

Ceras followed the stream until it joined up with the main river. A light smattering of rain carried in the breeze, rustling the trees. Ceras stopped at the river, rinsing some of the excess desert sand off his boots. Whilst the valley itself was green, the hills off towards the west were darker and angrier-looking, like the land had once been scorched by fire. Blister Hill lay in the distance, squatting on those dark hills like an ugly frog.

There came a gurgling noise from beside him. Ceras jumped as a pack of river raptors waddled past him. He touched the hilt of his nodachi in preparation, but the raptors seemed largely placid, and more interested in eating the weeds that grew along the river-bank than they were in eating him. Even so, Ceras decided not to hang about, and instead to make the final push to Blister Hill.

Ceras wasn’t sure how Blister Hill stood up in size to a place like Heft, but it was certainly not insignificant. This was, after all, the stronghold of both the Holy Nation and the Okranite faith. He’d once heard that the sacred flame of Okran had been burning here for over a thousand years, but he suspected it was nothing more than religious spouting.

The Okranite faith carried far beyond the holy lands, albeit in a far more tolerant form than what was practised in this part of the world. Ceras had once believed in Okran, too, but those times were long past.

“A moment of your time, please, brother,” said one of the guards as Ceras approached the gates. “We need to check you for illegal goods.”

“Uh… sure.”

Bag searches were common in the United Cities, but even when he’d had nothing to hide, Ceras had always felt nervous. Everyone knew someone who’d been framed, or else threatened until they paid a bribe. To give the paladins their credit, however, they carried none of that implicit threat, and Ceras suspected they were too honourable to take bribe money. Finding nothing illicit on his person, they waved him through. “You’re clear. Go on through.”

Blister Hill was filled with people at this time of morning. A few market stalls were being set up, and simply-dressed farmers were leading pack garru laden with produce to sell. A preacher was standing on a box, one hand holding a Holy Flame whilst the other gesticulated wildly at the crowd that had gathered.

“Holy brothers, it is your duty to help your wives overcome their darkest of temptations…”

If Launa had been alive, she’d have elbowed Ceras in the ribs, grinned and murmured, “Hear that? You’d better control me.” But she wasn’t, and Ceras had far less amused tolerance for the preacher than she’d have done. He headed instead to the bar, hoping the man’s incessant droning wouldn’t follow him inside.

The United Cities had always encouraged a culture of heavy drinking at all hours of the day, with strong alcohols like sake being sold by any barkeep worth their salt. When Ceras asked for rum, however, he was simply met with a blank stare, and offered grog instead.

As he took a cup of grog over to a table, Ceras was struck by how little everyone seemed to be drinking. Most were simply using the inn as a space to eat breakfast and socialise. There were a couple of Okranite soldiers, paladins perhaps, talking in a corner, and a small band of people in tricorn hats were tucking into bowls of cooked greenfruit. Everyone was human, Greenlander mostly, though Ceras thought he glimpsed a glowing pair of yellow eyes under the brim of one of the tricorns. The vast majority were also male. Ceras had never seen a bar so lacking in racial diversity before. The City Heroes back in the desert, notoriously prejudiced against anyone who wasn’t human, would have loved it.

“You got any more of those vegetables?” he asked the barkeep. “Smells pretty good, and I’m starving.”

“Yeah,” said the barkeep, narrowing his eyes at Ceras. “It’ll set you back what… five hundred cats.”

Five hundred cats was extortion, plain and simple. Ceras wondered if the barkeep charged everyone that kind of money, or if he was taking advantage of the fact he was from out of town. “On second thoughts, think I’ll just have some jerky.”

The barkeep shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

As Ceras passed a string of cats across the counter, he noticed a poster on the wall behind the bar. It looked oddly familiar and as he squinted at it, he realised he had recently seen something almost identical. The braid… the goggles… “Who’s the woman on the poster?”

“New to town, are you?”

“Just arrived.”

“Thought as much. Haven’t heard a desert accent that thick in a long time. That woman there? She’s kind of notorious back down Stack way.”

So Ava had managed to acquire multiple bounties. Ceras had to admit he was impressed. “Why? What’d she do?”

“Well, all goes back to her father really. What kind of a god-fearing man teaches his daughter how to read? But you know, he was the best at what he did and he saved a lot of lives. Good doctors are hard to come by, so I guess they just kept a close eye on him… But when you’re caught with heretical books in your house, even that’s not going to save you. They killed him of course, but his daughter got away. I bet they were her books, Narko’s spawn that she is.” He looked as though he wanted to spit on the floor, but evidently thought better of it. “And that’s why women shouldn’t be taught to read.”

“Y’know,” Ceras said, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “I heard she was wanted by the United Cities too.”

“Oh, yes?”

“And they caught her. Don’t think she’ll be troubling you with her heresy no more.”

“I see. A pity she fell into their corrupt hands, really. An opportunity to save her darkened soul, now lost to us.”

“Guess so… hey, you seem like you know things what go on around here. You heard anything about new people comin’ into town recently?”

The barkeep’s expression immediately became guarded. “What do you mean?”

“I’m looking for a Scorchlander. I ain’t seen many Scorchlanders in these here parts, so my guess is people’d notice ’em. You know of any what have arrived here in the last day or so?”

“Friend of yours?”

Ceras was about to nod when he realised the bar had gone very quiet. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the people in the tricorns had stopped eating. The paladins were watching him intently from the corner of the room. A suspicion tugged at his sleeve, and he turned back to the barkeep. “No,” he said. “Ain’t a friend of mine. Just someone I was looking for.”

“Well,” the barkeep murmured, licking his lips, “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but she’s been arrested. If you want more information, I’d suggest talking to the holy brothers over there.”

“Arrested?” Ceras echoed disbelievingly.

“Heard she was a Shek sympathiser.” The barkeep found a cloth and started dusting down the counter, even though it didn’t need dusting. “Like I said, if you want more information, speak to the paladins. It’s not my place to go spreading gossip.”

“I see. Well, thanks anyway.” Ceras slipped the jerky into his pocket. He glanced at the paladins, who were still staring stony-faced. _Shek sympathiser… _The girl had been smart enough to flee when Ceras had pretended not to have seen her. Had she really been stupid enough to run her mouth about how two of her friends were Shek?

“If you want _my_ advice,” the barkeep said, “I’d be careful about who you mix with.” He looked Ceras up and down, taking in his scruffy, sandy appearance. “It might be different in the desert cities, but in Okran’s lands, we do not tolerate Narko’s agents.”

“I guess not.”

“You would do well to discard those who seek to bring you into darkness, brother. Praise be to Okran.”

“Praise be to Okran,” Ceras said uneasily.

* * *

After spending so many months as a slave, Kat had never wanted to see the inside of a prison cell again. She’d forgotten just how claustrophobic they felt, how little space she had to move around in. The bucket the Inquisitor had given her the night before was at uncomfortably close quarters, and the stench of her own piss had found its way into her dreams. She’d nudged the bucket with her foot until it was as far away as possible, but that wasn’t enough. She huddled into the corner and pulled the neckline of her shirt up to cover her nose. Her clothes stank too, but it was still more tolerable than the piss-smell.

The Inquisitor had woken early, and was stamping documents at his desk. Kat watched him for a while. It wasn’t exactly fascinating, but it was something to occupy her mind with, and he didn’t seem to notice or care that the prisoner was observing him.

The police station was having a slow day, and time dragged. Occasionally a guard would walk by, switching places with another, but other than that, it was quiet. She was close to dozing off from boredom and a lack of good quality sleep when a group of paladins entered and spoke quietly to the Inquisitor. Kat’s heart jumped, but they weren’t there for her; instead, they were bringing in more prisoners, a group of hungry-looking bandits who’d evidently started a fight and lost badly. The bandits were taken to a cell block on the other side of the building, and things grew quiet again.

As Kat shifted position, the medallion pushed into her leg. She straightened out the best she could and slipped her hand into her pocket, her fingers closing around the cool, engraved surface of the medallion. Whilst it hadn’t been the thing that had gotten her into trouble in the first place, it had certainly sealed her fate by branding her a Shek sympathiser. Part of her wanted to hurl it with full force through the bars, but the stronger, more stubborn part of her wanted to keep it, if only to spite the paladins.

The Inquisitor was focused intently on his work, still stamping and signing. None of the guards were looking directly at Kat either. She slowly peeled back the neckline of her shirt and tucked the medallion into the modesty bandage wrapped around her chest. Wherever she was going, they’d be unlikely to take _that _off her, and if it created a suspicious-looking lump, the paladins would probably be reluctant to investigate.

Where _was _she going? She’d tried hard not to think about it, but she’d heard rumours of what they did with heretics. She remembered the fear in Ava’s voice when talking about her own bounty with the Holy Nation. Kat wondered if it could be any worse than the fate the United Cities had in store for Ava.

Kat had always found Ava a little harder to get along with than Ruka, especially given how snide she’d become as of late, but she still missed the doctor terribly. Her feelings of loss, too, intermingled with guilt that cut through her guts like a knife. Ava had saved Kat and Rei a few short months ago, and what thanks had she gotten in return? A lifetime of imprisonment… and given that her imprisonment would almost certainly be accompanied by brutal torture, it might not be a very long life. And Ruka… Ruka had willingly gone down with Ava, desperate for them not to be separated. Kat knew that unless a miracle happened, she would never see either of them again.

She sat on the floor of her cage, hugging herself tightly. This imprisonment was far worse than her time in the slave camp, with uncertainty hanging over her head and Rei’s comforting presence now many miles away, assuming she was even still alive. Maybe she too had been captured; the desert was full of manhunters, bounty hunters and samurai patrols, not to mention the other threats which would simply leave her to bleed out in the sand. In fact, the more Kat thought about it, the less plausible it seemed that Rei had escaped all those dangers with a large group of malnourished slaves in tow. And Rei was the only one of the four who still might have a future. If she hadn’t made it to World’s End…

Her gloomy reverie was interrupted by the sound of heavy boots on the wooden floorboards, and male voices conferring with the Inquisitor. She looked up. A group of paladins were clustered around the admissions desk, with several of them looking in her direction. She gulped. Her unease was only compounded when the Inquisitor led the squad up to her cage and unlocked the door.

“You’re coming with us,” one of the paladins said. Kat noticed he was holding a pair of leg irons, and the paladin beside him was carrying the heavy bracelets Kat remembered wearing all too well. Seeing her shrink back, the first paladin said, “Don’t make this difficult. We can promise you that you will be redeemed and reborn in the light.”

Kat barely heard the paladin’s words; her mind had wiped itself clean with panic. _No. Not shackles._ She kicked out as the paladin tried to put them on her ankles, knocking over the bucket. The paladin jumped back in disgust as the yellow liquid sloshed through the bars and across the floor of the police station. Kat’s reaction only bought her a few seconds, however, as two others dragged her out and held her down on the piss-soaked floor. When a swift kick from her hard-capped boots hit a paladin between his legs, they pulled her shoes off and locked the shackles in place. “If you wish to walk barefoot, be our guest.”

The iron bracelets were secured on her wrists, weighing down Kat’s arms. She lashed out desperately, but the paladins had clearly been expecting her to struggle, because a chain was brought out and locked onto each bracelet, fastening her hands behind her. As she was hauled to her feet, a heavy collar was locked around her neck and a chain was attached to it. The paladin Kat had kicked took hold of the chain and yanked on it, pulling Kat forward. “This could have been made a lot easier if you hadn’t resisted.”

“You’re gonna kill me, right?”

“There is still much darkness to be cleansed in you.”

“That’s not an answer.”

The paladin turned to look at her, and Kat remembered the Inquisitor’s threat that he would cut out her tongue if she answered back. She looked down at the floor, hunching her shoulders. To her fleeting relief, no knife was brought anywhere near her.

“Thank you for taking her off my hands,” the Inquisitor said as they walked past. Kat tried to turn her head to glare at him, but the force being exerted on her collar stopped her, and she had no choice but to keep looking straight ahead. The sullen-looking bandits joined her, and the small band of prisoners set off.

They moved at something of a shuffle, though the tide of paladins kept pressing them along. Townsfolk watched them pass by, and a few looked as though they wanted to throw things at her, but the surrounding presence of so many paladins kept them in check. Kat shrank her shoulders, hoping to blend in among the bandits, but she was better-dressed than they were, and she knew she stood out like a sore thumb.

“Scorchlander heretic!” someone yelled at her. “Burn in the flame of Lord Okran!”

“What did _you_ do?” said the bandit next to Kat.

“No talking!” one of the paladins ordered before Kat could respond.

As they left the city gates, it occurred to Kat that they were not planning to kill any of them, at least not at that moment. The paladins took them along a road leading vaguely northwards, and around the side of steep craggy hills and rocks. Though the weather was not especially hot, Kat felt the sweat building inside her shackles and prickling the roots of her hair. Her hair. If they were going to enslave her, as she suspected, she knew she was most likely about to lose it all again. At least there wasn’t as much to lose this time.

“Where are we going?” she said.

There was no response from the paladins. Kat shifted her aching shoulders and tried to straighten up, but the paladin holding her chain just yanked on it harder. “Keep moving.”

The walk was not as long as Kat had been expecting, a few hours at most, but her energy levels were sapped by the rough terrain, her chains and the fact the paladins had refused any of them a break. The soles of her feet stung where she’d trodden on shards of rock, and when she looked down she saw faint smears of blood left in the scrubby grass where she’d been walking.

Just as Kat was beginning to wonder if she even had the strength to walk much further, they rounded a corner and the gates of a settlement came into view. It was a large settlement, from the looks of things, surrounded by a huge quarry of mined-out rock. She felt the knot in her stomach tighten.

“What is this place?” she mumbled, her mouth dry.

“This is your salvation,” said the paladin who’d been leading her.

As they approached the gates, Kat noticed a number of people dressed in stained orange robes, toiling away at hunks of exposed rock. They were too far away for her to see properly, but she could tell even at this distance that they wore shackles, and their heads were shaved. Her stomach twisted itself into yet another knot.

“Salvation?” she said. “This is slavery.”

“We do not keep slaves here,” the paladin snapped. “Ignorant heathen.”

She’d escaped one life of slavery only to find herself in another. Kat was beginning to wonder if death might have been the better option.

They passed through the gates. The fruits of the slaves’ labours were obvious for all to see; a giant, ugly statue of a man blotted the landscape of the quarry, its palms tilted towards the sky as birds squawked and flapped above its head. It was not completely finished, and Kat could just make out a few orange-clad figures working on unstable-looking scaffolding by its thigh. She wondered how many slaves had died for such a pointless thing. It wasn’t as if it was anywhere civilians were going to see it.

“Here in Rebirth you will work,” said the paladin bringing up the front of the group, “so that you may tame the darkness in your hearts and be reborn in Okran’s light. Praise be to Okran.”

“Praise be to Okran,” murmured the other paladins as Kat shuddered.

The new slaves were forced to stand in line, men at one end and women at the other. Kat found herself at the far end of the line, where she noticed she was far smaller than even the other women. The chains were taken off their shackles, though the bracelets were left locked in place, as their heads were shaved and they were given foul-smelling orange robes to wear. Kat’s were too big for her, but one size seemed to fit all, and the chains were put back on without any mention of getting her something smaller. Nobody had noticed the medallion tucked into Kat’s bandage, and she was glad she’d had the foresight to try and conceal it.

She didn’t have much hair to shave off, but being bald again still felt odd. She was just glad she didn’t show any outward emotion when they took the razor to her scalp. Let them think she didn’t care. If they wanted to break her, they’d have to try harder than that.

A minute later, Kat regretted that thought. Two of the paladins took her by the arms, dragging her off the end of the line, and into a building off to the side that she hadn’t noticed before. It was swelteringly hot inside, and it took Kat a moment to realise this wasn’t a furnace but a forge. Even with the door wide open, the heat made her movements sluggish. How anyone could work in such a stifling environment was beyond her.

The smith himself was a solidly-built man with enormous muscles and a red face streaked with soot and age lines. He wiped his hands on his apron and tossed something into one of the small forges. “How many?”

“Six.”

“More troublemakers? Or just some unlucky drifters?”

“Mind your tongue, Arald, or you won’t have it for much longer,” one of the paladins sniffed.

“Aye, and you won’t have my craftsmanship, either…”

Kat was shoved to her knees in front of the anvil. Pain shot up her left knee as something sharp dug into it, but with two sets of hands on her shoulders, she couldn’t shift position to something less uncomfortable.

“Let this serve as a reminder to you,” one of the paladins told her. “Serve Okran well and you will purge the darkness from your soul. Try and escape and we will purge you in fire.”

“Please,” Kat begged, “please don’t…”

“Silence, wench of Narko.”

The room was too hot and airless. Kat felt the sweat on her brow, the throbbing sensation behind her eyes, the blurriness of the figures moving around her. In some ways, it came as a relief when her head was pushed onto the slightly cooler steel of the anvil, as it meant she no longer had to hold herself upright. The coolness spread across the left side of her face, almost caressing it as her sweating skin stuck to the metal. The right side of her face, which was exposed to the blistering heat, felt scorched in comparison. She tried to move, but the collar and the hands weighed her down too much, and the burning heat of the smithy sapped her strength.

When had she last had something to drink? Her vision was dark in spite of the glowing coals. It wasn’t until she’d felt the heat that she’d realised just how dehydrated she was.

“Don’t struggle,” the smith grunted, as though she was being an obstinate child. “The mark needs to be clear.”

His voice was little more than a foggy echo in Kat’s ears. She panted, fighting to keep some air in her lungs, but every breath was stolen by the oppressive heat. “Bastards. Fuck you. _Fuck you.”_ If she’d been more in the mind to do so, she might have been more forceful with her language, but right now all she could think about was the branding iron being heated out of her line of sight. “You’ll regret this. You will…”

The iron was brought over. The tip was glowing slightly, a curl of smoke pluming up into the hazy gloom. Kat stared at it, watching it blur into one long orange smudge that went on and on and on.

_I will not scream,_ she told herself.

Her mind didn’t want to work. It spun with the branding iron, tangling in a dance that smelled of iron and soot. Her grandmother and Longstoat watched from behind the smoke, their faces lined with sadness.

Rei, her shape borne by the smoke, reached for Kat’s hand with ghostly fingers. “Don’t scream,” she reminded Kat. “Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

The branding iron swirled towards Kat, pushing into her cheek. Fresh smoke, the smoke of burning flesh, plumed upwards and swallowed Rei. The fire burned.

Kat screamed.


	2. Vault

The sound of Ruka, vomiting into a bucket for the tenth time that hour, was gut-wrenching in more ways than one. Ava longed to do something — anything — but even though Ruka was only in the next cage over, Ava’s handcuffs stopped her from reaching through the bars. She watched as her friend slumped against the side of the cage, ashen-faced. She must have emptied the entire contents of her stomach by now.

Sobriety was a bitch.

“Ruka,” she whispered.

Ruka lifted her head. She looked thoroughly miserable, and she wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore. Her shoulders were hunched unevenly, and her right bicep was swollen. Her cuffed hands were shaking. It might have been pain or simply the shock of the alcohol leaving her system, but droplets of sweat were glistening against the bony plates of her brow. She was in a complete mess, and the injuries Kuto had inflicted on her during their fight weren’t helping.

“I’m sorry,” Ava said.

“Ava, stop with the apologising,” Ruka mumbled. “This isn’t your fault. We just had a bunch of stuff happen that led us to the wrong people.”

“But if I hadn’t…”

“Even if it was your fault, which it wasn’t, apologising ain’t getting us out of this mess.”

“She’s got a point, you know,” Luquin said from the cage opposite Ava.

Ava glanced at their fellow prisoner. She’d taken Ruka’s advice not to speak to him, and he seemed to realise this, but she imagined it had been years since he’d had any real human interaction. His hair was matty and ratted, his beard that of a wild man’s, but there was a keen curiosity in his glowing yellow eyes that told her he hadn’t entirely lost his mind yet. He wasn’t someone who sat around moping, either. In the day or so since Ava and Ruka’s arrival in Tengu’s Vault, he’d stretched the best he could in his chains, paced the small space of his cage, and occasionally given them advice. Ava almost felt inclined to ask him questions. After all, it wasn’t like he could do much to harm them.

Ruka bent her head over the bucket. Ava could smell the vomit from here, and it must have been enough to turn Ruka’s stomach too, because she threw up again. She didn’t speak after that, not even in response to Ava asking her if she was OK. Ava supposed it was a pretty stupid question.

_“Meeeennnnaaa!”_ wailed a voice from the adjoining cell block. Ava twitched. She still hadn’t gotten used to the screaming. The man, whoever he was, must have been tortured to complete insanity, and at various intervals his screams would carry through the upper floor of the prison. This time, however, one of the guards yelled for him to keep it down, and there was the metallic clang of iron striking iron as a sword was rapped against the bars of a cage. The mournful cries died down, although a faint trace remained. “Meena… ne meena… me…”

“So what did they do to _you?”_ Luquin said to Ava. “You look almost as bad as your friend there. Broken rib? Ribs? You’re taking pretty shallow breaths for someone who looks so busted up.”

“Thanks,” Ava muttered.

“Look, I don’t know how to do the whole social interaction thing. It’s been fifteen years. So excuse me if I’m blunt, but…”

“Fifteen _years?_ You’ve been in a cage for fifteen _years?”_

“Lady, look around you. Does this look like your average jail?”

“But fifteen years in the same cage…” Ava’s mind was having trouble processing it.

“They let me out occasionally.” Luquin shrugged. “Isn’t really sunshine and rainbows when they do, though. Staying here is generally better. So, what’s your name?”

“Uh…”

“If this is a trust thing, I’ve already given you my name. Luquin, Lu… You can call me Lu if it’s easier. Honestly, kind of prefer it.” He paused. “You have a name? Or is it still a secret?”

“It’s Ava.”

“Well, now we’ve been properly introduced,” said Luquin, “it’s nice to meet you, Ava.”

“What did you do?” Ava hadn’t intended to ask the question, but it came tumbling out of her mouth regardless.

Luquin chuckled. He sat cross-legged on the floor, his chains clinking. “Now _there’s _a story.”

“Ava, I thought we weren’t going to…” Ruka said weakly from her bucket.

“Talk to me?” Luquin said. “You’re pretty smart, then.”

Patches of colour appeared on Ruka’s pale cheeks, but she didn’t turn around. Her fingers were clenched tightly over the rim of the pail. She heaved, but did not throw up. “Urgh.”

“I tell you what,” said Luquin. “I’ll exchange a story for a story. How I got here, for how _you_ got here. Sound like a fair deal?”

“I don’t think—” Ruka began.

“Smart lady,” Luquin interrupted, “you’re gonna be here a _long_ time. The bounty poster version of how you ended up in this hellhole isn’t exactly classified information. So, we can exchange what stories we have, or we can sit in silence while our minds rot from lack of use. Up to you.”

“We kind of pissed in Tengu’s gohan,” Ava said.

“We all did. What makes your story different? Come on. I want action, adventure and preferably Tengu crying in a corner like a little girl. I promise mine will make it worth it.”

Ava looked at Ruka. “Maybe he has a point.”

“Just the bounty poster version,” Ruka said.

Ava turned back to Luquin. “We killed Slave Master Haga.”

Luquin’s laughter was sudden and explosive, echoing off the prison walls. “Oh _boy._ Tengu’s cousin? He’s gonna be _pissed.”_

“Wait, what?” Ava’s blood ran cold. “His cousin?”

“And if you killed Slave Master Haga, you must have taken out at least part of that slave camp too, right? Tell me you did. Only good slaver is a dead slaver, and all that.”

“We liberated the whole place… well, the ones who were still alive. There weren’t many.”

“One of the biggest slave camps in the United Cities? Holy shit, you’ve probably totally fucked the local economy. Love it. Still, I don’t exactly envy you. Tengu’s gonna retaliate, and he’s gonna retaliate _hard.”_ He stopped, seeing the expression on Ava’s face. “Why are you looking at me like that? You must have known what you were doing when you did it.”

“I… we didn’t know.” Ava felt her breathing quicken. Pain shot through her lung every time it touched her ribcage. “Not about Haga being the emperor’s cousin.”

“Well, second cousin. But seriously, you didn’t know half that lot were related? Tengu, Haga, Nagata, Ren, Grace, Kana? Yoshinaga too, if somebody hasn’t assassinated that asshole yet. They exist in their little den of Scorchlander nepotism. It’s not just the Scorchlanders obviously, most of the Shek nobles are related to each other as well. They’re all members of two or three noble families. Didn’t you know that?”

Of the four of them, Rei had been the only one from the United Cities. Why had she never mentioned it? Had she deliberately withheld that information? Ava wanted to believe the best of the girl, but she’d seen what she was capable of.

“Tell me what you did,” she said, trying to put the thought out of her mind.

“You ever heard of Lord Kurusaga?”

“Nope.”

“Wait, you’re not an Okranite, are you? You talk like one. Why’re you friends with a Shek?”

“That’s a different story. Who’s Lord Kurusaga?”

“I think the better question,” Luquin said with a quick flash of a grin, “is who _was_ Lord Kurusaga. You see, I kind of killed him. Impaled him on his own sword. Now, he was Tengu’s brother, and not in the figurative sense. A full brother, a blood brother. Made Tengu a bit upset.”

“I can imagine.”

“I never got to kill any slave masters, but I did free a bunch of slaves. I got a bit too cocky, to be honest. Thought I was going to become the next Tinfist. Shit, if there’s one regret I have about being locked up in here, it’s that I’ll never get to meet the guy. He was my fuckin’ hero growing up.”

“Tinfist? Isn’t that the Metal Brute? The Skeleton?”

“Ah, so you _are_ an Okranite. I see he has a reputation in the Holy Nation as well. I grew up on stories of Tinfist. Did you know he can punch right through a guy wearing armour? Like, _right_ through him? Yeah, you don’t want to cross him… But unless you’re a slaver or a noble or one of those paladins, you’re probably safe.”

“Right.”

“Huh, I wonder what’d happen if he ever went up again Eyegore. The most brilliant martial artist ever to have existed, versus a Southern Hive killing machine. That’d be a fight, wouldn’t it? Obviously Tinfist would win… well, I like to think he would win…”

His musings were interrupted by the arrival of the Warden. Ava shrank back involuntarily as he passed her cage. Ruka doubled up and retched into her bucket, though Ava suspected that had more to do with sobriety than fear. Chuckling at their discomfort, the Warden took hold of the bars on Ava’s cage and peered in at her. She glared back as defiantly as she could, but her trembling hands betrayed her.

“So. The noble-killers. You know, I heard that Lady Sanda had a special interest in seeing you brought to justice. I’m sure Lord Tengu will have done, too. I hear he wants to pay you a visit and enquire after your friends.” He laughed. “Looks like you and your friend have some decisions to make. Make things a little easier on our dear Emperor by telling him what he needs to know, or make things a little more fun for him. Your choice.”

Ava lifted her chin, glaring down her nose at the Warden. The Warden looked unfazed, and if anything, slightly amused.

“Such an insolent expression. We’ll see how long that lasts.”

He reached towards the lock on the cage, and for a horrible second Ava thought he might be about to drag her out. But he let the padlock slide through his fingers, and went on his way.

“Whatever you’re trying to hide, it’s not worth it,” Luquin said as soon as the Warden was out of sight. “They’re going to extract that information, one way or another. I’m sure you’d prefer to keep your fingernails.”

“I know.” Ava had been bracing herself for the Vault’s interrogation techniques ever since she’d been arrested. Just the thought of what was about to happen made her want to join Ruka with a bucket. She’d tried to bury it, but her fear gnawed at her stomach, leaking acid that burned her insides. “But I have people to protect.”

“I understand,” Luquin said quietly. “Believe me, I understand.”

* * *

  


The fire was still burning in Kat’s face.

Strangely enough, it hadn’t hurt so much when the brand had been new. When they’d removed the smoking iron from her skin she’d mostly just felt dizzy, with the taste of salt and vomit on her lips. It wasn’t until later that the seared nerves had begun to scream at her, and they had not stopped screaming.

It was not as hot in the quarry as it had been in the desert, but the air was still dusty. Flies buzzed around her head, trying to land on the untreated brand, and the constant religious jabberings of the paladins set Kat’s teeth on edge far more than the empty threats the slavers had made, back in the stone camp.

“Woman!” A paladin had seen her pause to wipe the sweat from her eyes, and was onto her in seconds. “Lazy like Narko! Keep working!”

Kat swung the pickaxe into the rocks in front of her. She wondered how much force it would take to break the paladin’s skull — probably less than was required to break up the rubble — but she immediately rejected the idea. She wasn’t a killer. Besides, even if she managed to spill cerebral fluid all over the ground, there would be no escaping the consequences. “I’m working, I’m working.”

“Don’t backchat! If you must speak, let it be a prayer! Pray to Okran! Beg for his forgiveness for your darkened ways!”

“Okran, Lord of Light…” The paladin smiled in satisfaction, and Kat would have done too if half her face hadn’t currently been on fire. “Please put some brains into this poor man’s head. I think the snot dribbling out of his nose is the last of his wits—”

The slap took her unawares. One minute she was standing, and the next she was sprawled across the rock pile, bright stars bursting across her vision. The back of her head stung where she’d been struck, and she could feel sharp stones digging through her robes and into her chest. “Insolent, tainted woman! It’s as well for everyone that you are here and not corrupting others with your heresy!”

Coughing in the rocky dust that had been stirred up by the sudden impact, Kat got unsteadily to her feet. She did notice the paladin surreptitiously wiping his nose on the back of his pristine white gauntlet.

“Pray again! Pray properly this time!”

“Praise Narko.”

This time she was expecting to be hit, and she was able to stay on her feet, but it still hurt. The paladin stalked off, and she was left with both cheeks blazing and eyes that took a good ten seconds to refocus.

“Nice,” whispered the Shek girl who was working alongside Kat. She’d evidently been in Rebirth a while; the flame-shaped brand on her face was a healed but very visible scar. “You really pissed him off.”

“Good.” _They’ll regret ever having marked me as one of theirs._ Talking back like that to a desert slaver would have earned her a serious beating, but the paladins were presumably under orders not to harm the prisoners too much.

“You’ll want to try and keep that brand clean. If you can get hold of any water.”

“Thanks.”

“Also, if you want to really piss them off, insult the Phoenix. They hate it even more than praying to Narko.”

“I’ll bear it in mind.”

“Name’s Iza, by the way.”

“Kat.”

There was the faintest hint of a smile on Iza’s face as she took in Kat’s furrowed brow and stiff, angry stance. “I gotta say, you look like one of those stubborn types. Which is good. They’re gonna try and mould you into some meek thing that says and thinks and does all the right things. Don’t let ’em, is my advice. Don’t forget who you were before this place.”

They worked side-by-side for the next few hours, breaking up rocks while other slaves took them to the processors. It was a thankless task, made worse by the fire in Kat’s face. She tried her best to hide her pain, but every so often the fire would flare up again, and she’d hiss through her teeth.

“It’s not much, but at least it hurts,” Iza said. “It’d be far worse if it didn’t.” She paused what she was doing to take a closer look at Kat’s cheek. “Yeah, it’s blistered up. That’s not as severe a burn as some I’ve seen. It’s gonna scar, but if you’re lucky, it won’t scar too badly.”

“Does it matter?” Kat said bitterly. “It’s pretty damn obvious I’m a slave, with or without it.”

“It means there’s hope. If you ever want to get out of this place.”

Kat could feel the blisters on her hands as well as her face. Her skin had softened in the time she’d been free, and whilst the calluses would return quickly, it still hurt to hold the pickaxe. “You know of anyone who escaped?”

“Not personally,” Iza admitted. “But hey, there’s gotta be some holes in the security somewhere, right? And I know there are at least three gates, probably more. There’s one that leads north that isn’t quite so guarded as the others.”

“What’s to the north?”

“Freedom. No Okranites. Just… well, probably nothing good, but it’s still better than paladins, right?”

Kat thought back to Ava’s map. World’s End had been somewhere up there. Maybe if she could break out, she could try and find Rei and warn her…

“Work harder, horned devil!” a paladin hollered. “You can still repel the darkness from within you!”

“Oh, here we go again,” Iza muttered as the paladin ran up to them.

“Confess your true nature, beast!”

Iza did not reply. The paladin’s face became blotchy._ “Confess!”_

“Make me.”

Kat squeaked as Iza was dragged away from her rockpile. A moment later the Shek girl was on the ground, with the paladin’s sword raised over her. “We’ll see if you’re still this stubborn with a few fingers missing.”

“Harmothoe, Harmothoe,” Kat sang out desperately as Iza sobbed, “she lived a life of anguish…”

“For chained in Rebirth she was condemned to languish!” sang the slaves at the processor, picking up on what she was trying to do.

“Till one day she’d been ravished by the high paladin most vile… and she swore her dark vengeance with a murderous smile…”

Kicking Iza away, the paladin ran towards Kat in an attempt to silence her, but it was too late; the song had been picked up by a number of slaves, and was echoing around the quarry. Not all the slaves by any means — the majority had their heads down and were working silently — but it was enough. The song was like a flood in the quarry, and none of the paladins’ shouts and threats could contain it.

“She stashed a long nail, forged to a blade! And one by one the guards were slayed! Now the high paladin lies dead, a nail in the eyeball, with it the name Harmothoe, in blood on the high—”

A gauntleted hand closed around Kat’s throat above the collar, squeezing her larynx. The light glinted off the paladin’s blade, which he was now wielding one-handed. His eyes were wild.

“—wall,” Kat choked out defiantly.

The iron grasp tightened, cutting off what remained of her air supply. “Perhaps nothing can save you from your own treacherous nature. If you are not careful, you will face serious punishment.”

He let go of Kat. She dropped to her knees, wheezing. Iza, who’d scrambled to her feet in the confusion, was back at work, chipping rocks as if her life depended on it. The paladin glared at her, but to Kat’s relief he didn’t follow through on his earlier threat. “I haven’t seen you before,” he said to Kat. “You must be one of the new workers who arrived yesterday.”

“New slaves, yeah,” Kat mumbled, clutching at her throat.

“You are not a slave! You are a holy—”

“Sorry, my bad, a_ holy_ slave.”

The paladin rapped her across the shoulderblades with the flat of his sword. “Stand up, woman.” As she struggled up from the ground, he said, “You may have been bold and insolent before Okran blessed you with this second chance, but the hard work will purge the darkness from your tainted soul. Work for his forgiveness. Work to repent for your sins. And you will overcome the pull Narko has on you.” He paused. “If something like this happens again, you will soon realise that Okran’s mercy will only take you so far. Know your place.”

“Oh, I know my place all right,” Kat said quietly as the paladin walked off. “And it isn’t in this stinking dump.”

Iza was looking at Kat in admiration. “That was some serious lip. Thank you, by the way.”

“Oh. Um, it’s OK.”

The day progressed on towards evening. When it finally began to get dark, a bell rang out somewhere down in the quarry, and the slaves brought their pickaxes back to the tool-sheds. Two Shek in the line behind Iza took her to one side and spoke to her quietly out of earshot of the paladins. Kat saw Iza nod in her direction, but the Shek shook their heads. Iza returned her pickaxe to its hook with a closed expression on her face, and didn’t respond to Kat’s enquiring glance.

It wasn’t until Kat was on her way back to her cage that Iza grabbed her by the arm. Kat jumped and looked around, but none of the paladins had noticed. “What is it?” she whispered.

“You saved my ass earlier, so… There’s a cage next to the rockpile by the statue. It’s set apart from the others, near the two slave-houses and the tower on the western side. You should try sleeping in it sometime.” She winked at Kat and walked away, leaving Kat staring dumbfounded after her.

“Hey, you,” one of the paladins said, seeing Kat loitering. “Get inside, now.”

“Yes, _sir.”_

The sarcasm was lost on the paladin. He pointed her towards one of the nearby slave-houses. “Move, or there’ll be no supper for you.”

Whilst many slaves spent cold nights outside in the quarry, tonight Kat had the dubious luxury of the slave-house. The building was dimly lit, with an electric light that was obviously broken and a fat candle on a counter. There were slave cages all around, with a few screens partitioning off the space under the stairs where the paladins slept. Technically, they called it a _holy dormitory_, or something equally disingenuous, but Kat wasn’t fooled; it was a slave-house, almost identical to the ones back in the stone camp.

The mention of supper had reminded Kat she hadn’t had anything to eat since the meagre rations of the previous night. She’d only managed half of those rations, with her stomach roiling and her cheek hot and cold and screaming. Now, her tired limbs were reminding her of just how little she’d eaten recently. She went into the slave-house, lining up with the other slaves for food. Dinner tonight was the same as it had been yesterday; cold sloppy vegetables with a few pieces of tasteless dry bread. She took the food into her cage.

“Now, let us give thanks to Okran for the food we have received, and the rebirth he has promised us.”

_Oh, not this again,_ Kat thought to herself.

“Praise be to Okran,” the slaves chorused, as Kat shuddered. One or two seemed heartfelt in their prayer, but the others were simply going through the motions, huddled with their heads down as though the paladins had broken both their shoulders. “Bless Okran for the food we have received, and the rebirth he has promised us.”

Kat had thought she’d gotten away with simply mouthing the words, but one of the paladins had evidently noticed her heart wasn’t in it. “You! Pray again, so I can hear.”

Kat, who’d already started eating, froze. The other slaves were watching her from their cages. She swallowed down the mouthful of soggy vegetable and looked up at the unamused paladin. “I’ve already prayed. Why do I need to pray again?”

“Don’t feign ignorance, woman. I’ve heard what you did earlier, and I want to hear a proper prayer out of your mouth before this day is out.”

“Oh.” Kat shovelled the rest of the food into her mouth before he could reach into the cage and knock the bowl out of her hands. “Well, too bad.”

There was a collective intake of breath from the cages. The paladin pressed his lips together, but to Kat’s surprise and relief, there was no retribution. “We will help you to overcome your nature. I shall ask one of the brothers to pray with you when Prayer Day is next upon us.”

Kat, realising she’d pushed her luck enough for one day, stayed quiet. The paladin took the candles behind the screens, leaving only the faintest smears of yellow light on the walls. One by the one the slaves drifted off to sleep, worn out from the day’s exertions. Kat listened to their snores, tired and achy herself, but her body was too obstinate to allow her to rest. A slight breeze blew in through the open door, and she shivered and huddled deeper into her stale-smelling robes.

She wasn’t sure she slept at all in the end, being vaguely aware of noises in the night, but then it was morning, and she was awoken by the sound of a key turning in the lock of her cage. She sat up, blinking the sleep from her eyes, and stared groggily at the paladin who was letting her out. It was still not quite light yet.

“On your feet,” the paladin said. He wasn’t the same one who’d told her to pray over supper. Kat watched, oddly fascinated, at the quivering black moustache on his upper lip. He had a facial tic, and every so often the snake would wiggle comically. Kat smirked, and the snake’s movements became even more erratic. _“Now.”_

The other slaves were being woken, too, and herded out of the slave-house by a group of paladins who were evidently doing the rounds. Kat joined onto the back of the line and followed them, as the slaves murmured to each other.

“What’s goin’ on?”

“We aren’t supposed to start for another hour…”

“Silence!”

They merged into a larger crowd of slaves, all pushed shoulder-to-shoulder in what was a fairly small open area. Being smaller than most, Kat found herself being elbowed and crushed, and the surrounding paladins squeezed the throng ever tighter. Someone stumbled into her back, shoving her towards the front. The crowd had formed a ring shape around something, and it took Kat a moment to realise what they were all supposed to be looking at.

Three wooden stakes. Three piles of logs and kindling. Three bruised and bloodied slaves secured behind the unlit fires. Kat would have staggered backwards, if there hadn’t been someone right behind her. _Iza._

Iza hadn’t seen Kat. She didn’t even seem to be fully conscious. Her face was busted up and one orange trouser leg was completely tattered and soaked in blood. She was bound in such a way that she was forced to stand, and all her weight was on one leg. The other was broken, and a bad break at that.

A man stepped in front of the stakes, blocking Iza from Kat’s view. He was a tall man, with armour that shone brightly in the firelight from the nearby braziers. The symbol of the Okranite faith was painted on his breastplate in glistening dark crimson. The sight of it caused Kat to shudder.

“It is truly a day for Okran’s reckoning.” The man’s voice wasn’t particularly loud, but it carried through the quarry. “Let it be known that none escape our Lord Okran’s judgement.”

“Let it be known,” the paladins echoed.

“Let it be known,” said the crowd.

“As the Overseer in this sacred place of second opportunities,” the man continued, “it falls to me to pronounce Okran’s judgement on those who would reject the fresh chance that has been provided.”

The three condemned did not answer. As the Overseer moved slightly, Kat thought she recognised the other two as the Shek who’d spoken to Iza yesterday, but she couldn’t be certain.

“Kneel,” said the Overseer. “All of you. Kneel.”

Kat didn’t move, _couldn’t_ move. Another slave shoved her roughly in the shoulders, knocking her into the dirt. From this distance, and in this light, Iza looked just like Rei. She couldn’t have been any older than Rei, either.

“You see these three here?” said the Overseer, gesturing to the condemned. “Look at them. They are beasts, children of Narko. We give the beasts a fair chance here in Rebirth, where they may work in the hopes of earning Okran’s forgiveness, that they may be born in the light.”

“In the light,” someone murmured from next to Kat.

“Indeed, many beasts have been saved from the darkness in this way. But these ones? They tried to escape Okran’s reckoning. Okran have mercy.”

“Okran have mercy,” said the crowd.

The Overseer signalled to three of the paladins. They lit torches from the braziers, murmuring prayers, as they stood before the condemned. Then, as one, the burning torches kissed the kindling, and flames immediately leapt up around the stakes. _They must have added fuel to the mix, _Kat thought, _no fire burns that quickly._

“See?” the Overseer said. “Okran’s fire leaps to purify them.”

Iza’s face contorted behind the flames. She was not unconscious enough. Kat jumped to her feet as somebody screamed an animalistic scream from beside her. It took her a few disconnected moments to realise it was coming from her own mouth. “Bullshit! You _murderers!”_

She didn’t quite register running at the stakes, or the metallic shape moving to intercept her. She did, however, register the crunch in her knuckles as flesh folded underneath them, and the screams that were now all around her. Strong hands grabbed her by the arms, too-long fingernails digging through her sleeves, pulling her away from the whimpering Overseer.

“Darkness be tamed!”

Kat stared wildly at the stakes. Iza’s movements had begun to slow, becoming more akin to random spasms than any kind of focused struggle. The slow stench of cooking flesh began to seep out with the smoke. When the breeze dropped and the smoke curled upwards, Kat saw the face twist and flake away. Something, possibly fat, was oozing from the skin, and she heard small popping noises as the flesh began to peel away from the bony plates. It was like watching a monster being birthed, only this was no monster. Kat realised she had tears in her eyes, and it wasn’t just from all the smoke.

“Perhaps she too is unredeemable,” someone said.

“Okran’s fire will purify.” The Overseer had composed himself, and though his nose was still gushing blood, he waved away any attempts to mop it up. His voice was thick from his busted sinuses, and Kat wondered if she’d actually managed to break his nose. “The hand that strikes a holy brother shall be cast into the flame.”

“If that’s the way you want it, Overseer.”

A hand closed over the shackle on Kat’s wrist, bringing her hand to the nearest brazier. Kat tried her best to bite down the scream, but it was useless; the scream found its way out just as surely as Iza’s had.

“Seek forgiveness, woman.”

Anything, anything at all to make it stop. “I beg the holy Overseer’s forgiveness,” Kat gasped as the flames hissed.

“And Lord Okran’s.”

“And Lord Okran’s.” The grip on her wrist did not loosen. Desperately she burst out, “Bless the paladins for cleansing me of my dark ways.”

“All right,” the Overseer said. “Let her go.”

Kat curled up on the ground the moment she was released, gripping her injured hand. Her fingers contorted, like claws that didn’t want to straighten. The Overseer watched impassively as she sobbed. “You are lucky that the Lord Okran is merciful. Now get to work. That goes for all of you!”

“I can’t believe she hit him,” a slave whispered as Kat staggered away.

“The high Overseer…”

What had she been thinking? Talking back was one thing, but _assault…_ As much as Kat’s hand burned and wept, she knew the punishment could have been a lot, lot worse. If she’d been a Shek like Iza, it wouldn’t just have been her hand in the flames.

Kat straightened out her injured hand as best she could, inspecting the damage. It was already blistering, and the pain was breaking through, matching the fire in her face. What was it Iza had said, about pain and blisters being a good sign? The burn looked bad, but it seemed more superficial than she’d initially thought. There was a good chance it would heal well, and she’d regain full functionality. At least, she hoped so.

She wiped her streaming eyes on her sleeve. Her clothes stank of burning flesh. She barely made it to her rockpile before she threw up in the gravel. Being sick made her feel no better; if anything, the emptying of her already empty stomach made her feel worse.

_Iza…_

So that was the consequence for getting caught escaping. In hindsight, Kat realised what Iza had been trying to do back at the tool-shed. She’d been asking the Shek to take Kat with her, and then when that had failed…

_Shit._ Kat now knew, without a doubt, what Iza had been telling her. What had she said? _The cage next to the rockpile… You should try sleeping in it sometime._

Kat flexed her injured fingers, then looked doubtfully at the pickaxe. She hefted it left-handed, manoeuvring it awkwardly as it landed in the pile of rocks. The rocks jumped everywhere, and whilst it was woefully inefficient, it was at least an excuse to look like she was being productive.

_It may be too late for Iza, _her mind said, as the smell of roasted meat filled the quarry. _But it’s not too late for me._

  
  



	3. Communication

Moll’s letter, neatly folded and sealed with a sliver of candle-wax, arrived far sooner than Rei had been expecting. Pia, who’d been responsible for bringing it up to World’s End, handed it over with a flourish and a beaming smile. “See, I told you I’d see your letter got to Moll. And then she wrote you one back, and gave it to me to give to _you_, and now you’re like pen-friends! Isn’t that cool?”

“Keep your voice down,” Rei begged; they were within earshot of the University, and sound carried a long way in these mountains. “Iyo’s not supposed to find out about this, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. Well, are you going to open it or what?” Pia danced from foot to foot, watching the letter intently. Scrap, too, was watching the letter, as if he was hoping it contained food.

“I guess. I just need to find someone who can read better than me.”

She found the twins in the University’s communal area, their heads together in conversation. Two steaming bowls of gohan lay on the table in front of them, but they were so busy talking they had barely touched their food. Rei walked up behind them and coughed.

“Oh, hi,” Spade said.

“You guys can read, right?”

“Yeah. Why? What d’you want us for?”

Rei hesitated. She didn’t know Spade quite as well as she knew Jared, and she’d already proven herself to be volatile when crossed. Jared, on the other hand, was a little more laid-back, and someone she was pretty sure she could trust. “Uh, can I borrow you for a minute, Jared?”

“Sure,” Jared said, as his sister scowled. “Sorry, Spade. I’ll be right back.”

Pia was loitering as they went outside. Her eyes lit up at the sight of Jared. “Hi, Jared. It’s nice to see you again. I know it’s been like, a year or something, and Iyo said you and Spade had left, but I guess that makes it nicer, right? What was the best tech you ever hunted? Ooh, and what was the most disappointing thing you ever found? Like, maybe you fought your way through a million of those scary spider things and all that was left in the ruin was a couple of manky books and a note saying _ha ha, suckers._ Oh, and how about—”

“Nice to see you too, Pia,” Jared said good-naturedly. To Rei, he said, “What did you want me for, anyway?”

“Oh, uh…” Rei felt her face grow hot. She thrust the letter into Jared’s hand. “Can you help me read this?”

“Yeah, sure.” Jared shot her an odd look. “Did Iyo tell you—”

“I know, I know. We — _I_ — sent a letter behind his back. Please don’t tell him.”

“Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me. Still, we should find somewhere private to read this.” Seeing that Pia was still hovering, he shooed her away. “Thanks for bringing this. You should probably get some rest.”

It was early evening, and the light in the mountains was beginning to dwindle. Long shadows yawned and stretched across the barren ground, and mountain birds flew to the trees to roost. Rei and Jared left the gates and went out onto the plateau, where the hustle and bustle of Tech Hunters and Machinists alike was replaced by a buzzing stillness. They sat cross-legged on the ground next to each other, enjoying the silence for the moment.

“Beats the desert, right?” Jared said finally.

“A bit rocky for my liking.”

He chuckled. “Are you one of those people who’s never satisfied?”

“I can’t be satisfied knowing my friends are out there somewhere. I don’t even know if they’re OK.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. Let’s look at the letter.”

Rei slid a thumbnail under the candle wax, grimacing as a chunk broke off and dug into her nail bed, and unfolded the paper. Moll’s handwriting bore the mark of someone with far better penmanship than Rei. Jared whistled when he saw it. “Now that’s pretty. You want to have a go at reading it first?”

“Dear Rei,” Rei read falteringly, straining her eyes a little over the delicately curved letters, “thank you for reaching out. Whilst you were not a slave of the oh, oh- _r__—”_

“Okranites.”

“Whilst you were not a slave of the Okranites, your story speaks to me, and I am confident that you would find a place here in… does that say Flotsam?”

“Yup.”

“Here in Flotsam, if you desire it. To that end, if you would like to join us, send word back with Pia. I would love to meet you. Moll.”

“Well then,” said Jared.

“I don’t know why I thought it’d be longer,” Rei said, staring down at it.

“You know, you didn’t really need me to help you. You read that all with barely any difficulty. I think you underestimate your reading ability.”

Rei snorted. “Like I’m literate.”

“Compared with the rest of the world, I’d have said you were.” He watched her intently for a moment. “Was there something else?”

“No!”

“Are… are you OK?”

“Yeah. Just ignore me. I’m fine.”

There was a brief, awkward pause.

“About what happened a few nights ago,” Jared said, breaking the tension. “If you ever need to talk to me or Spade, we’re here to listen. You took on one hell of a burden back in the stone camp, and it kind of sounds like you were already carrying one. I’m not gonna pry, and to be honest I’m not the sort of person to really talk about stuff myself, but don’t isolate yourself, yeah?”

“I’m not isolating myself.”

He chuckled. “Well, you keep wandering off with your dog. None of us can ever find you.”

“I don’t like hanging around the University.”

“Given that it’s run by a jerkass with a penchant for explosions,” Jared said dryly, “I don’t blame you.”

Rei snorted. Jared’s description summed up Finch well enough. “Iyo seems OK though.”

“I guess,” said Jared. “Never really understood Skeletons, to be honest. It’s really hard to tell what they’re thinking sometimes. You always kind of get the feeling that… I dunno… that they have completely different thought processes from the rest of us. Like they work on a completely different mental timescale.”

“Makes sense. They’re thousands of years old. Imagine living that long. I think I’d go mad.”

“I guess. They reset themselves though, don’t they? They have to. Otherwise all the memory clogs up, or something, and then they start breaking. That’s when they _do _go mad.” He shrugged at Rei’s questioning glance. “I quizzed Iyo about it once.”

Scrap was gambolling about on three legs, searching for good rocks to sniff. Rei kept one eye on him; he was still young enough that he might try and launch himself off the mountainside in search of whatever small wildlife was about. Jared noticed. “Should we go back?”

“I guess so.”

He stood up and extended a hand. She smiled faintly, took it, and allowed him to help to her feet. Jared looked at her for a few moments, an enquiring expression on his face. Rei realised she was still holding his hand.

“Oh… sorry.” She quickly dropped it. The temperature in her cheeks rose by several more degrees. “Zoned out for a minute there.”

“Hey, it’s fine. If you want to hold my hand, I’m not gonna complain.”

A proper smile tugged at the corner of Rei’s mouth. “I hardly know you. Maybe you should stick to hunting tech, Jared.”

“Maybe I should.”

An unwitting giggle rose up inside Rei. She covered her mouth to stifle it, feeling like a little girl. What was _wrong_ with her? “I think I’ll brave the University for a bit this evening. Maybe I could use some company.”

“I’m sure there’ll be plenty wiling to oblige.”

Rei called Scrap and the three of them walked back to World’s End, passing between the tall Okranite statues the Machinists had installed as a foil for the Holy Nation. Trying not to feel too much like a criminal for doing so, Rei tucked the letter away in her pocket as they reached the gates. The last thing she needed was somebody seeing it and asking questions.

“Nice evening for a stroll,” one of the guards remarked. She winked at Rei. Rei realised that whatever guilt was written on her face, it was undoubtedly hidden under all the layers of redness. She clenched her fingers around the letter and did not respond.

Spade was still sitting at the table when they got back. Her arms were folded. “Your food’s cold,” she bluntly informed her brother.

“What?” Jared said distractedly. “Oh, that’s fine.” He laid a hand on Rei’s shoulder. To Rei’s surprise, the touch was not immediately sickening, though her muscles twitched slightly in response. “Remember what I said, yeah?”

“About…”

“About not isolating yourself.”

“Oh, yeah. Of course. Sure. Right.” She nodded and hurried upstairs. “Thanks. See you later.”

Finch’s lab was quiet and mostly empty, the Machinists having largely clocked off for the evening. Lekko was talking to one of the few remaining Machinists. Finch himself was at a workbench next to a pile of books the Tech Hunters had presumably brought back from their most recent excursion. Every time he leafed through one of the tattered, water-damaged volumes, he would sigh and throw it onto a second, slightly smaller pile.

“What do you want?” he said as Rei approached.

“Just wondering what you were doing.”

“What does it _look_ like I’m doing, genius?”

“Uh… it looks like you’re going through old books.”

“That was a rhetorical question, because the answer is obvious to anyone with half a brain.” Another book was slammed onto the second pile, which was starting to teeter. “If you’re going to gawk, do it somewhere that isn’t immediately in my personal space.”

“OK, I’m going,” Rei said, backing away. Maybe Lekko and the Machinist would provide some friendlier conversation.

The Machinist was a Greenlander woman in her late fifties, with grey hair pulled under a brown cap and a pair of safety goggles around her neck. She had a stout, sensible air to her, a stark contrast from Finch. She nodded at Rei as she approached. “Hi there. I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced yet. I’m Sabina, one of the lead researchers here. You’re Rei, aren’t you?”

“That’s me.”

“We’ve just been chatting about some of Sabina’s work,” Lekko said.

“Oh, yeah?” Rei said politely.

“Yeah! She has some really interesting theories on ancient history.”

“Which are wrong,” Finch called out from his workbench.

Sabina rolled her eyes and lowered her voice. “Our esteemed leader can’t handle the possibility someone else’s ideas might be better than his.”

“I heard that, Sabina! If these books didn’t have _half their pages missing…” _The last book was slammed on the workbench with a crash. “I might have some stronger evidence for my claims than empirical observations and educated guesswork.”

Sabina grinned mischievously, and Rei realised that stout, sensible air was not an entirely accurate reflection of her personality. “A good scientist never blames his tools.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re happy about this, because it means I can’t prove how wrong you are.”

“Just wait for it,” Sabina said. “He’ll be accusing me of sabotage next.”

Rei was curious now. “What_ are_ your theories, anyway?” she asked Sabina.

“It actually relates to religion. You know about Okran, right? And how he split his form into two halves, which became Okran and Narko? Light and dark? Well, my hypothesis is that Narko was the leader of the Skeletons and Okran was an ancient human. There might have been some battle between the two, a battle which the humans won. There’s some holes in the theory, but I think it stands up fairly well.”

“Natural disaster,” Finch said. “Nothing to do with a battle.”

“If you want to refute my findings, do it in your thesis.”

Finch turned to scowl at her. “And I will.”

“Anyway, Rei, I hope you’re finding the University satisfactory for your needs. If you ever want a proper tour, just let me know. I’m sure we can accommodate it.”

“Proper tour,” Finch muttered. “Apparently this place has gone from being a haven of learning and research to some entertainments venue for unintellectual halfwits.”

“Thanks,” Rei said, wandering over and picking up one of Finch’s discarded books. It was easy to see why there were pages missing. The volume was old and fragile and the binding had long since ceased to be functional. The few pages that remained were mostly printed, although there were some handwritten sheets tucked away inside. Rei couldn’t read anything of what was on them; half seemed to be written in an alphabet or cipher she didn’t recognise.

“Put it down,” Finch snapped at her. “You’ll only damage it further.”

“Sorry,” Rei said. She decided not to point out that violently slamming the books on the table wasn’t conducive to retaining their condition either. “Where’s Iyo?”

“I don’t know, do I look like I’m supposed to know where my assistant is every second of every day?”

“Eesh. I’m just asking.”

“Go and look for him yourself, if you really care that much.” He waved her away. “Not that you care about anything other than _disrupting my work.”_

Before Rei could think of a suitable retort, there came the sound of raised voices from downstairs. An argument was happening, and it was happening loudly. Muffled words carried through the floor, although Rei could not make out what was being said.

“If you want to be useful, tell them to keep it down,” Finch said irritably.

Grateful of the excuse to leave, Rei went downstairs with Scrap. The twins were still the only two people on the ground floor, and judging by their body language, it was Spade who had started the argument. Neither had noticed Rei standing by the foot of the ramp.

“What do you mean, you’re _done_ with talking about this?” Spade was shouting at her brother. “You have no reason to be _done!_ Remind me, Jared. Which of us ended up as the slave master’s personal bed-warmer? Which of us got maimed by cannibals? And while we’re on the subject, which of us got downed by a blood spider while exploring ruins? You’ve had a fucking easy ride of the past year, so you don’t get to—”

“Fucking easy ride? After everything that’s happened to the people I cared most about? Spade, do you really think I haven’t been affected by—”

“Don’t think I haven’t seen you making goo-goo eyes at Rei!”

The whole time they’d been arguing, Scrap had been whining and shrinking into the wall. Rei, who’d been just about to make her presence known, froze at the sound of her name. Jared stared at his sister, who was visibly bristling. “Is that what this is about?” he said finally. “Am I not spending enough time with you for your liking?”

“It’s not just that!” Spade bellowed. “It’s that you’re thinking with your dick! And don’t try and deny you like her, it’s obvious to all of us. Do you really think she wants male attention after everything that’s happened? Maybe if you stopped being selfish and abandoning your actual family in favour of some girl you hardly know…”

“Spade, keep it down. She’s only upstairs, she might hear.” Jared glanced at the ceiling, then at the ramp. His eyes slowly slid to Rei, who was staring stony-faced at the two of them. “Well, shit.”

Spade stormed out. Jared smiled awkwardly at Rei, but it quickly faded at the contemptuous expression on her face. “I’m sorry you had to hear that. Uh, maybe we need to have a conversation about this?”

“Go after your sister,” Rei said through gritted teeth, “you bastard.”

Jared blinked. “What?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Come on, Scrap.” She hurried from the building, chasing after Spade’s swiftly-retreating form. “Spade! Wait up!”

Spade did not slow down, or visibly react at all. Puffing and panting, Rei ran until she’d caught up. “Hey, I’m sorry. I should have done more to check you were OK. Please, don’t run away from me. Can I talk to you?”

“What about? My worthless brother?”

“No! Come on, let’s find somewhere to sit.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Bar. Bar? I’ll buy you a drink.”

Spade hesitated. “Just one drink. And I’m still not talking to you.”

It was a start, at least. They found a tavern which was more or less empty, and sat a table away from the bar. Spade scowled at the cup of grog Rei had placed in front of her. “I’m not going to stop you getting with Jared, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“OK. First of all, this isn’t about Jared. Secondly, even if it was, he’s being a shit brother to you right now. And you know, I guess… I guess it’s the easier thing to do, sometimes. Just to sweep all the problems under the rug and… and pretend everything’s fine when the rug isn’t even lying flat anymore. I don’t know, I don’t really do metaphors. Point is, it sounds like he’s trying to avoid talking about the stuff that’s been affecting you.”

Spade did not reply.

“Like I say, I guess it’s easier said than done. Talking about stuff can be hard, and I know neither of you really do…”

“Are you expecting me to spill my heart out or something?” Spade interrupted. “Coz it’s not going to happen.”

“No,” Rei said. “No, I’m not.”

“Good.” Spade drained her cup in one go. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

“He died like a bitch, you know,” Rei said.

Spade, who was halfway through getting up, paused. “What?”

“Haga. Calling for his guards. I looked him right in the eyes as I took his head off.”

“Did he beg and plead? Did he cry? Did he piss himself?”

“Yeah,” Rei said. She had the feeling Spade knew she was lying, but was choosing to believe it. “It was coming out of both ends by the time it was over.”

“Good,” Spade said with a wry chuckle. “When faced with death, those flatskins are all the same. A bunch of gutless cowards.”

“Yeah,” Rei said again, not without some guilt.

“Hey, I guess I owe you for killing the bastard. Want a drink?”

“I thought you were leaving.”

“Yeah, but… if it’s a conversation you want, I gotta be drunk for it.”

“Sure, I’ll have a drink then, I guess.”

The barkeep brought a bowl of water for Scrap and two more grogs for the table. Spade looked down at the bonedog, who was deeply interested in the table leg, and smiled slightly. “You know, your puppy’s cute. Even if I _have_ seen him bite someone’s arm off.”

“Best kind of dog’s a guard dog. You can stroke him if you want.”

Spade’s eyes lit up. “Can I?”

“Sure.”

Scrap was less accustomed to Spade than to Rei, but he had no real objections to her touching him. Rei watched as Spade tentatively stroked his head with her good hand. “He doesn’t bite unless provoked, or if I’m uneasy I guess he can get a little snappy. If he doesn’t like you, he’ll give you warning.”

Eventually Scrap grew bored of the attention and wandered off. Ever since they’d properly splinted that leg he seemed mostly fine, and Rei was hopeful it would heal well. They finished their drinks, then came to an unspoken agreement and ordered more.

“Never just one drink, is it?” Spade said with a grin.

Several drinks later, the pair of them were beginning to feel the effects. Rei switched to water and tried to nudge Spade to do the same, but she shook her head and ordered more rum for herself.

“How do you have it all together?” she mumbled, as Rei surreptitiously switched their drinks. “How do you _cope?”_

“I don’t.”

“Balls,” Spade slurred. “Bet you never have to think about any of this stuff.”

“I see him in my dreams most nights. Once, I nearly jumped off a roof because I had a moment of… I thought he was still there, with me. I don’t think there’s such a thing as having it all together, to be honest. And even if I do manage to forget about him, there’s still all the other stuff. I was in charge when you got attacked, and… it was me who uprooted three of my friends’ lives to chase after a revenge that never felt as good as it did in my head.”

“Oh, yeah. Those people I saw you with. The little Scorchlander… I swear I’d seen you two before, as slaves.”

“Yeah. We escaped together, me and her. I hope she’s OK. And Ava and Ruka. I’m already responsible for enough deaths as it is.”

“Hey.” Spade slid her injured hand across the table towards Rei. It was still heavily bandaged, but as she touched Rei’s wrist, her missing pinkie and ring fingers were obvious. “The cannibals? That was on us. We should have warned you. And I’m really sorry.”

“I guess we all made mistakes.”

“Yeah. For what it’s worth, though, I don’t think any of us could have been in charge any better than you. Well, maybe Lekko. Not any of the rest of us.”

“Thanks… I think.”

“Spade?”

Rei looked over her shoulder at the sound of Jared’s voice, and saw him hovering in the doorway to the bar. “Oh, hi Rei.”

“You here to apologise?” Rei said, standing up. Her movements felt a little clumsier than usual as she went up to him.

“Are you — you’re drunk, Rei. Aren’t you supposed to have a concussion?”

“It’s fine. Are you here to apologise?”

“Look, I don’t see what—”

“Is it really so difficult for you to understand? Here, I’ll break it down for you. Your sister has been through hell and she needs you to actually be supportive. And you don’t show that by taking Iyo’s side over hers and then not going after her, or not talking to her when she clearly needs to talk, or trying to avoid her by talking to me instead…”

“OK, that’s not fair. Have you any idea how much she yells and lashes out at me when I try and help?”

“Right then.” Rei grabbed his wrist and pulled him over to her recently vacated seat. “Sit down. Talk to her.”

Jared pulled his arm out of her grasp. “This isn’t your concern, Rei. Go and lie down, you’re fucking wasted right now.”

“I’m sober enough.”

“You really aren’t.”

“Even if I’m not, what does it matter? I’m right and you know it.”

“No, Rei. You’re not right. You got my sister drunk, you’ve been drinking when you shouldn’t be, to say nothing of the other poor decisions you’ve made.”

Rei jerked as though he’d slapped her. “What do you mean?” she said quietly.

“Just… stop interfering with our lives, Rei. It’s none of your business if we fight. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m taking my sister back to the University.”

“I was just trying to help,” Rei said in a small voice.

“Yeah?” Jared put an arm around Spade’s shoulders and helped her from the bar. “Well, don’t.”

Rei faltered, unsure what to do. She eventually opted for going back to her seat, as the barkeep watched disapprovingly. _What a mess,_ she thought hazily. She wasn’t sure whether she was referring to her handling of the situation, or her current drunken state. She finished off Spade’s drink and slumped onto the table, wishing she could do something right for a change. Scrap whined at her feet, nudging the toes of her boots.

“I know, boy,” Rei mumbled, rubbing her face. “I know.”

* * *

The third day of their imprisonment in Tengu’s Vault came and went. At least, Ava thought it was the third day. Time had dragged unevenly, passing in a haze at points and slowing to a crawl at others. Ava had scratched a fingernail in the dirt each time she’d been fed, and the tally was showing at six. It didn’t mean much. The Warden hadn’t been lying when he’d said he fed them only when he could be bothered, and Ava suspected the time that had elapsed thus far might have been longer than she’d initially thought.

Ruka had stopped throwing up, but she wasn’t speaking much, either. The expression on her face was uncomfortably reminiscent of when they’d first met in Squin. Ava didn’t blame her for losing hope. There hadn’t been any in the first place. They would lie in their cells until they rotted, probably going mad in the process. Perhaps that would be a mercy. After all, sanity was cold and bleak and smelled like shit and sweaty iron. There was no comfort to be found in their surroundings.

Perversely, it was almost a comfort when they came for her.

“Get up,” the Warden said, unlocking Ava’s cage. “You’ve been sitting here a little while, maybe you’re ready to have a chat.”

Ava, who’d been sitting in the same uncomfortable position for hours, had to grab the bars of the cage to get herself back on her feet. Ruka was standing too, watching the unfolding scene. The lifeless expression on her face had been replaced by one of horror. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “If you’re taking one of us, take me.”

The Warden looked her up and down, taking in the beaten, dishevelled, but fierce-looking Shek. “I don’t think so. We want this to be as easy as possible.”

“No! Ava! _Ava!”_ Ruka’s voice rose to a scream.

The helmeted samurai who’d been accompanying the Warden took Ava by the arms and marched her out of the cell block. Ruka’s shouts had set off the gibberish-screaming prisoner in the next block over, and the Warden twitched in visible irritation. “Someone silence that woman,” he said to a group of static guards by the ramp. “And that damn screamer.”

The guards hastened to oblige. Ava was brought down the ramp to the first floor area. The place didn’t look like it had been prepared for torture, not that she could clearly make out much that wasn’t right in front of her nose. She was led to a table and sat on a bench. The handcuff on her left wrist was removed and instead used to secure her right hand to the solid metal leg of the table. Having even one hand free felt like a luxury, and she flexed her wrist to try and get some feeling back into the joint.

“Don’t try anything,” one of the guards warned, before they both stood to attention on either side of her.

Ava sat and waited. Upstairs, Ruka had fallen silent, though she heard the occasional confused, warbling cry from the insane prisoner. She ran her finger along the groove of the table, careful not to make too many sudden movements or give the impression she was trying to reach for anything. There wasn’t much on the table, just a water jug and a few empty cups, but those nodachis looked sharp enough to take off a curious hand with just one swing of the blade. When one of the guards grunted at her, she let her hand fall still, and waited in silence.

The waiting was the worst part, and she suspected it was intentional. Five minutes passed, then ten, then a quarter of an hour, and still there was no sign of any torture implements or even her interrogator. The Warden, whom she’d assumed would be the one to ask the questions, had disappeared downstairs. Ava closed her eyes and tried to breathe deeply, ignoring the pain in her chest that came and went every time her ribcage moved.

She counted a further ten minutes before the Warden returned, this time with a man in tow. Ava’s blood ran cold at the sight of him. He was dressed in a resplendent silk gown of turquoise and gold, which shimmered in the sickly electric lights. It took Ava a moment of squinting and trying to bring him into focus to realise he was a Scorchlander; his hair was dark, not white, and his eyes were concealed behind a pair of round, delicately-framed shaded glasses. Whilst she wasn’t sure who he was, she could guess. He walked like a gutter that had smelled prey, and she reflexively shrank back as he sat down.

“Good evening, Ava,” he said.

Ava’s left hand was trembling. She slowly removed it from the table and placed it in her lap. Her right wrist felt sweaty inside its handcuff, and she didn’t want to think about what kind of expressions might be written on her face.

“Dear me, do peasants have no manners? We may as well exchange the basic pleasantries.”

“Before you torture me? Or after as well?”

“Come now. Nobody has to torture anyone. We are simply having a conversation.” The voice became a little more dangerous. “Perhaps we should start again. Good evening, Ava.”

“Good evening,” Ava muttered.

“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Have some water. Sitting in a cage must be thirsty work.”

He poured some water from the jug and handed the cup to Ava. She waited until he’d sipped from his own cup before taking a drink. By Okran, she was thirsty . If the Warden was poor at remembering to feed his prisoners, he was even worse at remembering to give them water. It was just as well that the biting temperature in here was so much lower than the desert outside. “You’re Emperor Tengu.”

“And you are the Okranite who murdered my cousin. It seems you are in good company here, given the man you’re currently sharing a cellblock with.”

“I didn’t murder your cousin.”

“Oh, really?” He lowered the glasses, his glowing eyes watching Ava intently. Ava suddenly realised she’d made a mistake. “So tell me, Ava. Who did?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you _do_ know. Warden, would it be possible to get some food for our guest here? She looks rather hungry.”

The Warden sent a passing guard to fetch food from one of the partitioned areas. Ava tried not to react as a bowl of rice and greenfruit was set down in front of her, but her rumbling stomach betrayed her.

“It’s not a trick,” Tengu said. “Eat.”

“I think this is a trick.” Ava tried not to think too much about the delicious smell, or the fact her stomach hadn’t been properly full in a week, but hunger won out over her principles and she started wolfing down the food. Tengu sat back in his seat, tilting his head back, and watched her through his shaded glasses.

“See? Not a trick. Maybe we can get some trust going.”

_“Trust?”_ Ava said with her mouth full of rice. “I don’t _trust _you. How could I trust you?”

Tengu did not reply. Ava finished the bowl and it was taken away again. “Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself, Ava. Not about your friends, about you. You’re not from around here. You’re an Okranite. It seems that you’ve passed over the fertile green lands of the west for the rather more arid climes of the east. Must have made an interesting change.”

“Maybe.”

“Rather more non-humans around here than you’ve been used to, I would hazard. Plenty of Shek. For an Okranite, you seem to get on well with them.”

“I guess.”

“Your friend upstairs seemed very distressed when I summoned you for our little chat.”

“Oh yeah?”

“She seems to care a lot about you.”

Ava felt the little muscles twitch under her ears, pulling her face taut. Tengu noticed the change and chuckled. “Maybe she should join us for some food and conversation.”

“You do anything to hurt Ruka, you’re dead.”

“Do you realise, Ava, that making threats against the Emperor’s person is a crime? I’ll pardon it, just this once. I’m sure that with all the excitement, you forgot you were unarmed and handcuffed to a table.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what you want?”

“I think you know what I want, Ava.”

“You want to know where Rei is.” She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Everything she said was feeding into Tengu’s aims. She clamped her lips together, praying she was not about to make any further slip-ups.

“Ah yes, Rei. A little Shek girl who wants to be the hero of her own little story. You’re smart, Ava. You know her idealism is dangerous. If only you could see the effect it’s had on the northern cities. That one stone camp produced a sizeable portion of the building materials we had to work with. With that gone, we can’t invest in new camps, we can’t repair broken machines, and the prices of other things are climbing as a result. Economic cause and effect. Add to that the Reaver problem in the south and our uh, problems with a certain Skeleton who’s been terrorising the slavers down that way… The economy is fragile. One little push, and everything can change in an instant. Who do you think is going to suffer from that, Ava? The nobles? Or the ordinary people, like yourself?” He looked at Ava enquiringly, but Ava did not respond. “I don’t think this is necessarily what you intended, and… well, maybe she led you astray with her flights of fancy. I couldn’t possibly comment.”

“What makes you think any of this was her idea?” Ava said, fighting to keep her tone neutral. She wasn’t sure she managed it, because Tengu’s eyebrows rose.

“Come now, Ava. My cousin’s proclivities were not a well-kept family secret. And from my correspondence with my dear friend Lady Sanda, I think I know enough about you and your… associates? Partners in crime?”

He was trying to goad her into saying _friends. _Ava just shrugged, the handcuff rattling against the table as she moved. “I know what you’re up to. And I’m not giving them up that easily.”

“No, I didn’t think you would,” he said. “But now, I think I know how you might be persuaded.” He stood up, signalling to the Warden. “I think I’m done here for the evening.” To Ava he added, “We’ll resume our conversation tomorrow evening. Maybe you should sleep on your decision.”

The guards yanked Ava away from the table and reapplied the handcuff to her other wrist. She held her head high as she was taken away, keeping her withering gaze on Tengu. He seemed entirely unfazed by it. “Goodnight, Ava.”

Ava looked away. They went up the ramp and back to the cells, the Warden walking ahead with the key. Her heart sank as she realised she was not being returned to her former cage, but to another one on a different section of the floor. She was pushed inside and the door was slammed.

“You know, I don’t think we ever cleaned this one out,” the Warden said. “Still, at least you got an empty piss-bucket there.” His laughter echoed around the metal walls as he strode off, jangling his keys.

Ava sank onto the floor. It was filthy. There had to have been a previous inhabitant, because she could see strands of white hair caught on the rust of the bars. What had happened to them? Had they died in this cage? She shuddered, and the brief moment of fear was only amplified when the electric torch post by her cell chose that moment to flicker and go out entirely.

_Fear the living,_ her father had once said, _not the dead._ At that moment, Ava would gladly have taken a ghost over whatever Tengu was planning for her. She sat in the darkness, feeling the dust and grit under her bare feet, and wondered if she dared lie down.

When the light came back on five minutes later, Ava was just about able to see what was around her. The surrounding cages were completely empty, and aside from a stationary guard positioned at the end of the cell block, there was nobody in sight. She wanted to call to Ruka to let her know she was all right, but had no idea where she even was, and when she tried to clear her throat, her voice didn’t seem to want to work properly.

_If only it hadn’t worked earlier,_ she thought bitterly.

How could she have been stupid enough to fall for it? Now she thought about it, Tengu had just been throwing ideas at her, waiting for her to give herself away. He may not have known for sure, but she had confirmed his suspicions. _Idiot._

_I’m sorry, Rei,_ she told the buzzing electric torch. _I just hope for your sake that you aren’t still in World’s End._


	4. Path

Operating the stone processor was a dangerous task, especially one-handed. The teeth of the machinery were just lying in wait for an unwitting hand or an unguarded sleeve, and the task of grinding the stone took Kat’s full attention. As much as she longed to let her mind go numb, she had no option but to focus whenever she was near the grinding-wheel.

She’d only been in Rebirth three days, but the paladins all knew her as a troublemaker, and they watched her closely as she worked. Although she’d taken care not to show any more outward signs of disobedience, they took the opportunity to preach to what they saw as a soul increasingly slipping into darkness.

“Even tainted by Narko as you are, you can still be redeemed! Work harder, and pray for forgiveness!”

Kat loaded more rocks into the processor. The edges were rough and sharp and one of them nicked the end of her finger. She watched the bead of blood with dispassion. Her finger stung, but nothing hurt as much as the fire.

“I said pray!”

It wasn’t a fight worth getting into. Iza’s tortured, dying scream still echoed in Kat’s mind, and her right hand was so swollen it didn’t look much like a hand at all. “Okran have mercy. Forgive this lowly woman.” There was a clunk as more rocks went into the machine. “Bless the Lord of Light for giving me this second chance.”

“Good.”

Kat finished loading the rocks and kept an eye on the machine as it ground them into gravel. The breeze caught some of the grit, wafting dust into her eyes. They started to water. She ducked her head, not wanting the paladins to think she’d been crying.

The machine made a loud buzzing sound. It had jammed up again. Kat could see the obstacle; a piece of rock that had not been properly broken up by whoever’s job it was to do so. She gritted her teeth, shook back her left sleeve and pushed her hand under the grinding-wheel.

It was a risky move, and Kat knew her reaction times were going to be slowed by the heavy shackle on her wrist, but she had no choice. Already she could feel the paladins’ impatient eyes on her, wondering why she hadn’t fixed the problem already. She wiggled her fingers, trying to hook them around the obstacle, then stuck her right elbow on the side of the machine to give her some leverage.

The rock came loose so suddenly Kat was nearly hit in the face. She shook out her stinging hand and threw the rock into the refuse pile as the grinding-wheel began to turn again. The protesting buzz had now become a happy hum, and she went back to her task.

Another worker was sent to help her. The slaves were under orders not to speak to each other, an order that was sometimes broken if they were not under direct supervision, but there was no conversation to be found with the paladins breathing down their necks. The woman started passing stone up from the piles waiting to be processed. Kat didn’t need to look to know she was staring at her hand.

Kat wasn’t the only one who’d faced recent punishment. Even with her field of view restricted by the machinery, she could see slaves that were limping or clutching body parts. _The flesh is unimportant,_ the paladins had said when they’d caught Kat sobbing in her cage the night before. _It is your soul that matters._

Kat never thought she’d get used to Rebirth; even in the stone camp, she had spent her ever waking minute bitterly wishing she was somewhere else. But home, whatever and wherever it may have been, felt like a long way away and a long time ago. She thought longingly of Bark, of the way the sunlight glinted off the ocean waves and the sea breeze that drifted in and mixed salt into the sand. The storm-house with the damaged floorboards from the times Rei and Ruka had taken out their anger and frustrations on their surroundings. The little swamp-house on the waterfront with the platform that Kat had sat on and dangled her legs over. It had only been a few weeks ago that they’d left, but it felt like years.

The swamps had been her home before Bark. There may have been nothing for Kat in Shark anymore, but she remembered the place fondly, and remembered all the interesting stories the travellers and bar patrons had told her. Even with the threat of the gangs, it had still felt oddly safe, a sanctuary from all the horrors that surrounded it. The blood spiders had still been an issue of course — everyone in the swamps knew someone who’d died to them — but they had never bothered the little swamp-house Kat had shared with her grandmother. She would have happily taken Shark, blood spiders, vicious gangs and all, over the joyless, endless toil that was Rebirth.

The sun began to sink behind the cliffs of the quarry. The birds, which had been circling and cawing for most of the day, went to roost on the statue. Kat had finally figured out the purpose of the statue. It was there purely so the slaves had something to work on building, a constant reminder of who owned them. She’d heard one of the older slaves mutter, “That eyesore’s been built up and taken down three times since I’ve been here. Cycle of rebirth my arse… they just like to tear our hard work to shreds.”

As the last of the rays gave way to the night, the bell rang, signalling the slaves to get back in their cages. Kat, who’d been dwelling on what Iza had said the previous night, followed her directions to the cage she’d been referring to. Next to the rockpile by the statue… apart from all the others…

“You! Move faster! Get yourself in a cage!”

There was a cage meeting Iza’s description on the western side of the quarry. Kat hurried past the paladin and got inside it. A few guards were moving about and checking the cages were secure, but they seemed to be in a hurry, and only gave Kat’s cage the most cursory of checks before throwing food in at her. Thankfully, there were no prayers to be had out here. She sat down with a sigh, nibbling at the bread they’d left her, and took stock of her various aches and pains the best she could with so little light.

She was in a mess; there was no denying that. The palm and the tips of her fingers on her left hand were covered in tiny blisters and lacerations, and she was almost glad she had no access to hot water for washing. Several of her fingernails were broken, one torn off well past the quick. Her right hand was useless. Her feet ached from the hard ground and being forced to stand all day, and the heavy iron shackles chafed at her joints. Everything stank of old sweat and burned flesh, herself included. With the stone camp, and with Rebirth, and with the loss of everything she had cared about, she was beginning to question if she was even a person anymore. She rubbed her eyes with the least injured hand, trying not to cry, but the grit on her fingers only made things worse, and soon her eyes were streaming.

_Idiot,_ she told herself. _Are you really going to give up now and just lie here whimpering? What about the cage? I thought you wanted to find out what Iza meant?_

Ignoring her aching legs, she stood up and inspected the cage door, then gave it a tentative push. It was locked. Her hopes of a faulty mechanism that would allow her to just walk out were immediately dashed. Of course… even a quick test would have told the guard if the door wasn’t locked. Still, Kat assumed this was the cage Iza had escaped from, and she had all night to solve the mystery.

She tried to find flaws in the rest of the cage, testing each bar in turn, poking at the floor, even standing on tiptoe to see if there were any clues in the roof of the cage. There was nothing. Maybe Iza had been messing with her, maybe the smith had already fixed the cage, or maybe Kat had simply misunderstood.

She went back to the lock, though she wasn’t expecting much. This side of the cage had no keyhole, presumably to avoid slaves picking themselves free. She ran her left hand over it, but felt nothing unusual. On the face of it, it seemed like a completely normal lock. Nothing particularly sophisticated, but secure nonetheless.

It took her a few minutes of determined searching to find it, a groove in the iron casing. It was a neat groove, about an inch long and perfectly vertical, and it snagged her fingertip as she moved her hand. Somebody must have gotten hold of some tools and cut through into the lock. Being such a neat job, and on the inside of the cage as well, it was unlikely any paladin would notice if they weren’t specifically looking for it.

_Huh._

She pushed her fingernail in a little way and came up against the inner mechanism. Whilst she couldn’t see, she guessed that the lock had been cut into in such a way that escape was possible. That meant there were either only a few pins to secure the cage, or there were more and they were accessible from the gap…

She moved her hand down and gasped in pain as something stabbed her already-pricked finger. A tiny piece of wire, bent and twisted to conceal it in the casing. She hooked it out and unbent it, hoping it would be enough.

Kat knew enough of lockpicking theory to know that the pins inside the lock needed to be raised to unlock the mechanism. The problem was, she couldn’t tell how many there were in the dark, and her left hand was clumsy. She glanced around again to check no guards had appeared since she’d discovered the groove in the lock, and pushed the wire through the gap.

It was not a quick task, and at points she nearly gave up completely. Ava had known how to pick locks, a skill Kat had always meant to ask her about but had never gotten around to. Now she’d never have the chance.

Eventually, the pins were in the right position, and the cage was unlocked. Kat gave the door a very small push to make sure the pins couldn’t fall back, and wondered if she should take the opportunity she’d been presented with.

Her instinct told her to leave it. She remembered all too well Rei lying unconscious in her arms after an unplanned escape attempt. They would both have died in the desert had Ava and Ruka not come along. But this time Kat didn’t have another person to look out for, and if she could get out of her shackles and make a run for it, she’d be free.

The issue was, each shackle would need to be unlocked separately, and she wasn’t convinced she’d be able to take the collar off blind. She didn’t have any keys, or the tools of her predecessor. All she had was a broken cage and shackles that were still very much intact. If she was caught escaping, her previous record was almost guaranteed to get her killed, and probably in the same gruesome way Iza and the other two Shek had been.

_Is this where you want to be for the rest of your life?_ she asked herself. Broken and full of regrets? _You’ve seen what they do to people here, what they’ve done to_ you. _And what about Rei? The instant Ruka and Ava break, they’ll come after her…_

__Kat prodded the cage door, her mind racing. It was a stupid idea, and a dangerous one, but if she stayed out of the light she might just stand a chance. Whilst she hadn’t eaten properly in several days, she was still in a far better position than she would be when she began to starve. Already she was beginning to feel the exhaustion from lack of food and proper sleep, and nobody even knew where she was, let alone have the ability to rescue her. If she ever wanted to escape, she would have to do it herself.

_If nothing else, do it for Rei’s sake._

She squatted down, fiddling with the shackles on her legs, but her trembling left hand kept missing the keyholes. She briefly considered trying to get into one of the slave-houses to find something to remove them with, but she concluded it was a bad plan; the slave-houses would have guards in them, and some of the slaves had been in Rebirth for so long they would probably side with the paladins and try and alert them. It had been the same in the desert, too, where slaves could be punished for keeping silent when a fellow slave was escaping. Kat also suspected that at least some of the slaves really believed they deserved Rebirth, and that they could somehow gain redemption by working themselves to death. It was a twisted kind of masochism, really, the kind that was born from extreme religiosity.

_I don’t want to become like that._

She took a deep breath, pushed the cage door open, and hurried into the shadows. Nobody was out and about at this time. The paladins would be sitting down to supper and prayer, and she had a few hours before it started getting light. She used the night to her advantage, stealing through the darkness as silently as she could. Though she wasn’t sure where she was going, she had a rough sense of direction, and started moving up the path to where she thought the less-guarded northern gate was.

Kat had grown up on stories of ninjas — assassins so skilled in the art of stealth that they were almost invisible to the eye. She tried to emulate a ninja now, though the chain on her legs was a little too short for proper sneaking, and it dragged and clinked across the ground at the slightest misstep.

_This is a terrible plan, _her sensible voice told her. Kat ignored it and kept on sneaking. She passed by the watchtower on her way up the slope. The door was open, and she could see paladins moving about inside. She stayed low to the ground, moving as swiftly and silently as she could to avoid detection.

_If there’s a god out there who wants to help me out, now would be a really good time to do it._

Walking in the dark was a risky business, even without the paladins. Her feet already stung from being forced to go barefoot, and pain shot through her heel as she trod on a particularly sharp rock, but the adrenaline blocked most of the nerves, and she managed to stop herself from crying out. As she tried to navigate a hairpin bend in the dark she bumped into something very hard, and realised she was up against a large rock face that served as a natural wall.

_Just a little further._

She could see the gate in front of her, calling to her. The itch for freedom prickled under her shackles. Two guards stood at the gate, talking quietly amongst themselves. From their body positions, they were facing towards Kat, and she guessed that slaves trying to break out were a bigger problem than people trying to break in. She looked up at the Sentinels, or where she thought they were; the high walls of the quarry obscured most of the lower sky. As far as she could tell, she’d gone the right way. This had to be the northern gate.

“Did you hear that?” one of the guards said suddenly.

Kat pressed herself into the rock, hoping the crevices would be enough to conceal her. The guards were very close; close enough for her to be able to see that one was quite old and the other not much more than a teenager. There was some light behind the two paladins, but she wasn’t entirely sure how far it actually carried. She closed her eyes, aware the glowing irises might give her away.

“Hear what?” The second guard was the elder of the two. He sounded far more jaded and less earnest than the younger. “I’m not interested in your birds.”

“I don’t think it was a bird. Maybe it’s someone trying to escape.”

“Don’t think so, somehow. Escapees are rare things. You’re just on high alert after the other night. And you know, I can understand that you might like to be the one to catch a deserter…”

“That’s not what it’s about!”

“... but if you keep blathering like you are now, you’re not going to be able to hear anything, are you?”

“Wait, _you’re_ the one who’s blathering…”

Kat stole forward as the two men bickered. It sounded more like banter than any kind of serious animosity, and she suspected both were bored stiff with standing around in the cold. In spite of that, she proceeded carefully, fully aware that the younger guard had been on high alert just a minute before.

The gate had been designed like many modern city-gates, where keeping out marauding armies was of far greater importance than keeping out a single, solitary person. In the flickering light of the torch-posts on the other side, Kat could just make out the weaker points in the gate’s design; the main steel framework that supported the outer section was not sealed against it, but rather attached by metal bars. An agile child might be able to squeeze through the gap between frame and portcullis… or a small, skinny teenager.

Kat sized up the edge of the gate. The lowest of the bracing bars was at just below knee-height, meaning she’d have to stretch in her chains to step over it. But it was doable. She bit down on her lip to stop herself making any vocal noise and slowly clambered onto the gate platform where the two guards were waiting. A second later, she nearly bit right through her lip as she knocked against something in the dark. It took her a cold-blooded moment to realise she had walked straight into the crank that raised and lowered the gate, and she clutched her abdomen reflexively. Thankfully, it took more to turn the crank than simply bumping it, and the still-bickering paladins did not appear to have heard her blunder.

She ducked under the crank, careful not to stand up too suddenly and bang her head, and made for the lowest support bar. Technically she might have been able to crawl under it, but there was the very real possibility of getting stuck, or being spotted in a vulnerable position. So instead she pushed back her sleeves, pressed her left hand and her right elbow against the sides of the gate to steady herself, and carefully lifted her legs onto the support bar.

Swamp-lander children often had the dubious privilege of having people of less than pleasant repute being concerned with their “education”. On occasions when her grandmother had not been there to keep an eye on her, local thieves had often tried to coax Kat into running little obstacle courses, often with the promise of a reward if she managed to get around the whole thing. At the time she’d seen it as a game, vaulting over rotting logs and splashing through swamp-water to get to the promised sweet at the end, but it had been training; plenty of the gangs had had their eye on her as an up-and-coming thief.

Kat had never become a thief for any of the gangs in Shark, but now she was oddly thankful they’d tried to use her for their own ends. She used the sides of the gate as supports to help lower herself down, though her elbow slipped halfway and she only just caught herself before she fell. The near miss sent a cold shock of adrenaline flooding through her, and her heart began to thump as she realised she was on the wrong side of the gate… or the right side, depending on one’s viewpoint.

_One wrong move and this will all be for nothing,_ she thought, giddy with nerves. She wondered if she was about to be sick.

A torch-post was burning not far from where Kat stood pinned against the side of the gate. It was certainly close enough that she could feel the heat on her face, and it made her reel. Iza’s melting face flashed through her mind, and this time, her stomach lurched. She clamped her good hand over her mouth, forcing the vomit down before it could betray her.

As she hesitated in the shadow of the gate, a thought came into her mind. It was an idea she had first heard about in a story, told to her by a former adventurer who had found himself lost in a cave filled with giant, bloodthirsty land-bats. Kat hadn’t really believed the tale, but his supposed means of distracting the bats might just work on a pair of susceptible paladins…

She reached down, her fingers curling around a loose rock. The ground was covered in them, probably remnants from the time when the gate was newly-built. Very slowly she drew her hand up and back, reached through the gap she’d traversed a minute before, and threw the stone back down the path. It bounced once, then twice, then clattered off the side of the path.

The bickering stopped.

“OK, I definitely heard something then,” the younger paladin said. “I think there is someone out there.”

“Wait until they reach us,” his companion cautioned. “Remember we’re supposed to be staying here.”

_Bollocks._ Maybe that was a trick that only worked in stories. Still, her plan had half-worked. Whilst the guards weren’t exactly running off to investigate the source of the noise, they were keeping their eyes fixed on the path back to the quarry, and neither was looking anywhere near her. Getting away would still be risky, but it was doable.

It was now or never. Kat picked her way up the path, giving the torch-posts as wide a berth as she dared. There were two sets of them, and they flickered as she hurried past, but she remained unnoticed. She was around the corner and congratulating herself before she realised there was a defensive wall across the path, looming out of the darkness at her.

_Fuck._

It took Kat a few panicked seconds to realise the wall didn’t go the full way across the path. There was a choke-point to the left of her, but in order to navigate the tight bend she’d need to follow the wall. If she was seen, she’d be met with a storm of arrows from whatever turrets were up there. She followed the base of the wall, half-expecting a searchlight to be turned on, but there was no sound from above, nor any sign of movement.

The wall gave way to rocky mountainside. Kat stopped and looked back for a moment. There was no sign of any guards coming after her. From here on out she was alone, with nothing but the night for company.

Kat couldn’t believe she’d done it. The adrenaline had begun to wear off, leaving her with a cold, shaky feeling that turned her limbs to iron. What was she supposed to do next? She was still shackled, and even if she managed to remove them, she was unmistakably a slave. The orange uniform, the shaven head, the brand on her face… all were slave markings with varying degrees of permanency. _Security in chains._ She was sure she knew what that statement meant now. It meant she was royally screwed now she’d managed to escape.

Part of her thought of her broken cage, and the possibility of going back. It was not too late, after all. The rest of her squashed that thought down, protesting that she’d put too much on the line to give up now, and pushed her forward. She followed the winding path as it twisted and turned like a serpent hugging the mountainside, and hoped she’d be able to find a safe, quiet place to rest up.

But away from the lights of Rebirth, it was too dark for Kat to even see her hand in front of her face, let alone find somewhere to sleep. She stumbled, the adrenaline crash taking its toll, and tripped on the edge of the path. The impact tossed her like a ragdoll, jolting the chain on her ankles and sending her rolling down the slope. She eventually came to rest, half-stunned, trying to figure out what had just happened.

_Crap._

Her legs stung from her uncontrolled descent, and she could feel blood seeping through the knee of her trousers. Her other joints ached, and her burned hand, which had automatically tried to catch her as she fell, stung as pus leaked out from popped blisters. Red fire erupted in front of her eyes, spreading across the right-hand side of her face. She dug her elbows in, trying to propel herself forward the best she could, but it took serious effort, and she no longer had much left to spare.

She would die free at least. That was something of a comfort.

Her eyes drifting closed, she curled up where she lay, huddled against the cold breeze. There would be wild bonedogs nearby, or paladins, or bandits. Something would undoubtedly make her their meal.

The darkness grew a little darker, enveloping her in its soothing embrace.

* * *

The torch-post buzzed like a dying fly, its light flickering in a way that gave Ava a splitting headache. Even if she hadn’t been restless with fear and anticipation of what was to come, the constantly alternating state between dim light and darkness had been impossible to get used to, and had punctuated what little sleep she’d had.

The bits of Ava that weren’t bruised and injured ached from her uncomfortable sleeping position. This cage was smaller and more cramped than her previous one. The rough edges of the bars had scratched at her neck while she’d been asleep, and her fingertips felt numb with the dry dust on her hands.

There had been no noise in the night. Even the screamer had stayed silent. The silence had felt like a thick cloud of gas, heavy and oppressive and suffocating. Ava’s mind had raced as she’d tried to sleep, pulling up scenario after scenario until it had ultimately exhausted itself. She’d reached out to Okran in prayer, or had at least tried, but the thick metal walls of Tengu’s Vault were like a barrier between them. In days gone by, she had felt it when her tears were acknowledged, but now she felt nothing but cold emptiness.

Night bled into morning. Though the lack of natural light made it difficult to know for sure, Ava heard the stirring of fresh guards, listened to the distant taunts of the Warden, and guessed that it might have been breakfast time at home. Quiet conversations sprang up between guards over mundane topics such as Lady Kana’s new hat or the tax hikes in the southern territories. Sometimes the conversations offered insights into their personal lives. A cousin getting married, a niece getting promoted in the United Cities army. It was so much more difficult to see the helmeted figures as faceless entities when they spoke so candidly with one another. Ava almost wished they wouldn’t.

She found herself nodding off at several points during the day, though whenever the guards saw her sleeping, they would laugh and rap their weapons against the bars of her cage until she woke. There was no food for her, and she began to think almost longingly of yesterday’s meeting with Tengu, when she’d been allowed to eat a full meal for the first time since her imprisonment. Her stomach growled in memory, and it made the hunger feel worse.

_Don’t talk, don’t say anything at all, that’s how he’ll get you_, she tried telling herself, but the words rang hollow in her head. If only it were that simple. If Tengu decided to bring torture into the equation, she had no idea what, if anything, she would say to get it to stop. _I’m not brave or strong like Ruka. I can’t withstand physical pain. I’m barely holding together as it is, given how I almost died back in the Spine Canyon._

When she was finally brought from her cage, she soon realised just how much everything had added up. The isolation, the tiny cage, the lack of food and sleep, and the uncertainty and self-reflection all combined made standing difficult. She suspected it was all part of Tengu’s plan. As much as she hated to do it, she had to hand it to him; he knew what would be effective.

“Feeling woozy?” one of the samurai said, giving Ava a shove. It was enough to unbalance her, and she nearly fell straight into the guard in front. The mockery and the physical violence was a far cry from the firm, but detached way she’d been treated the day before. Maybe it was just that particular guard, or maybe Tengu had planned for this too. She found herself being half-escorted, half-dragged downstairs, the chains on her legs scraping against the metal ramp. It was undignified and humiliating, but Ava was beyond caring.

This time, Tengu was in the room when she arrived. He was sitting at the table, pouring himself a cup of tea with as much ease as if he had been doing so in his own home. He looked up at her arrival, and so did the figure opposite him. Ava blinked as the hazy shape came into focus, realising it was Ruka. _Shit._

__“Good evening, Ava.” Tengu’s voice was as polite as ever. “Take a seat.”

Ava barely registered that she was even sitting down until the handcuff was taken off her wrist. This time, her hands were pulled around one of the table’s metal support beams and locked back together. It afforded her some movement across both hands, as she could slide them along the welded beam, but not much. She felt far more vulnerable than she had been when she’d had only one hand cuffed, and she shrank her shoulders in, expecting trouble from the guards hovering over her.

“Hey,” Ruka said quietly from beside her. Her voice sounded like iron dragging over rough stone. “Did he hurt you?”

“No.” Ava’s own voice was less hoarse than Ruka’s, but not by much. Fleetingly she wondered if it had always sounded like that and she’d just forgotten. It had been a full day since she’d spoken, though it felt like far longer. “Ruka…”

“I thought you might be missing each other,” Tengu said, “so I thought you could spend some quality time together.”

“You bastard,” Ruka hissed at him. “You _bastard.”_

“Dear me, Ruka.” Tengu sounded like a disappointed father. “There’s really no need for that kind of language.”

“Fuck you. You twisted, corrupt, steaming pile of garru shit.”

“You know, I wish the pair of you would make things easier for all of us. It tends to lead to… more pleasant outcomes, shall we say? And I’m sure you’d much prefer a pleasant outcome to the alternative.”

“The alternative?” Ava said.

“Come now, Ava, don’t be disingenuous. I know you’re intelligent.” He folded his hands. “And I’m sure you wouldn’t want to see Ruka come to any harm. You said as much yourself, when I spoke to you yesterday.”

Ava looked down, avoiding Ruka’s eye.

“You can hurt me all you want,” Ruka said, “but I’m a Shek warrior. I doubt a badly-dressed flatskin with a god complex would leave much of a mark.” But Ava knew she was bluffing; behind the bravado, there was fear and uncertainty.

“Really? Shall we test it?”

He reached for something out of Ava’s line of sight and put it on the table. It was a wooden box, long and narrow, the kind that might have contained tools. Ava watched as Tengu unlatched the box and lifted the lid, pulling out a small, clear bottle filled with a greyish-coloured powder. He uncorked it, gave it a sniff, and re-corked it. “Dear me.”

Ava found herself shrinking back as far as the handcuffs would allow. Tengu set the bottle on the table where they could both see it, and relatched the box. “You know, we could have a conversation about this. I don’t think Rei would blame you for giving her up.”

“A conversation, you say,” Ava said, eyeing the bottle.

“You must be pretty starved for conversation at the moment, Ava. I’d have thought you’d be keen to see Ruka again. Or are you not feeling talkative?”

Ava stayed silent.

“I see. Well, this is quite the awkward reunion. Still, I suppose it can’t be helped.”

“Why don’t you just ask us your damn questions,” Ruka said, “instead of hiding behind cups of tea and pretending to be nice.”

“Ruka,” Ava murmured.

“You know he’s gonna do it anyway.”

“Since you ask, Ruka, I’ll indulge you. Rei. Your fellow Shek. Tell me what you know about her.”

“I said you should be asking us questions,” Ruka said. “I never said I’d answer any of ’em.”

“No, I thought not.” Tengu sighed and picked up the bottle, shaking the contents a little. Ava stared, wide-eyed, as he unstoppered it. “It seems that we’re both wasting time here.”

Tink. Tink. The little glass vial tapped against the rim of the teacup, sprinkling grey powder. Tengu pushed the cork back into place and set the bottle by his saucer. He lifted a spoon and stirred the tea three times, then set the spoon down too. Ava watched as he brought the tea to his lips and took a sip. “Sometimes a little sweetener is all you need. So, let me offer my own sweetener. We have a conversation, you tell me the truth, and I leave the pair of you to live peacefully in your cages. I can speak to the Warden and have you put in adjoining cells again.”

“Live peacefully?” Ruka echoed. “You mean you’ll leave us to rot in your filthy prison.”

“I take it that’s a no, then.”

“Fuck you.”

“Have it your way.”

Tengu opened the box again and put the bottle back. Ava watched as he took out a far smaller vial and held it to the like. She could just make out the pale, reddish liquid inside. “Do you know what this is?” he said, as casually as if he’d been asking Ava for some medical advice.

“No,” Ava said truthfully.

“Have you ever encountered a blood spider?”

Ava remembered the blood spiders all too well. She and Ruka had once travelled through Venge, the place where the gutters hunted the spiders. The gutters had been a serious threat, but the spiders had been far more difficult to see in the dark. At night when the laser beams were inactive, they scuttled across the ground in search of prey. Ava and Ruka had done more running from spiders than they had gutters; taking them on was next to impossible without a good crossbow and some kind of armour defence against the venomous acid they spat with great accuracy across large distances. Ava vaguely remembered Ruka telling her that if the venom hit its target, they’d be done for. “Yeah,” she mumbled. “I’ve seen them.”

“This is blood spider venom.”

Ruka’s sharp intake of breath caused Tengu’s head to turn. “Oh, so you know what this does.”

“You’re bluffing,” Ruka said.

“And would you like to test _that?”_

Ruka shook her head quickly, not taking her eyes off the vial.

“Maybe you can explain to Ava here what it does.”

“It paralyses you,” Ruka mumbled. “Blood spiders, they eat their prey alive, or as freshly dead as possible. The venom locks up your limbs but not your lungs, so you can breathe but you can’t move. And… from everything I’ve heard, the pain is worse than having all your limbs torn off.”

Blood spiders weren’t native to the Okranite lands. Ava had never even heard of them until she’d left Stack. She was glad Ruka had spared her the specifics as they’d been crossing Shem and Venge, otherwise she might have turned and willingly run back into the hands of the paladins.

“So… Ruka,” Tengu said. “Since Ava has decided she isn’t talking, I’m leaving this decision to you. You have a few options here. The wisest option, of course, is to cooperate. You tell me what I need to know, I put this vial back in its box, and we’re all happy.”

“I’m a Shek warrior,” Ruka repeated stubbornly. “You can threaten me all you like, but I’ll take the pain of losing four limbs over the knowledge that I betrayed a friend.”

“I thought you might say that,” Tengu said. He inclined his head in Ava’s direction. “So I pose this conundrum. What if you had no choice but to betray a friend? Would you choose Rei, or would you choose Ava?”

“The fuck do you mean?” Ruka said, but Ava could tell she’d already worked it out. “_No._ You do _not _touch Ava. And you don’t go near her with any of that stuff. If you use the venom on her, I swear to Kral I will find a way to get out of these handcuffs and I will murder you.”

“Ruka, don’t tell him anything,” Ava whispered. “Please. You’ve got to protect Rei.”

“I have to protect you, too.” Ruka was shaking.

Tengu selected a needle from the box. Ava recognised the sort as one that might have been used to stitch flesh wounds. He regarded it thoughtfully for a second before dipping it into the vial. A single droplet of red liquid trickled down the tip of the needle. “Hold her still,” he told Ava’s guards.

_“No!”_ Ruka screamed.

The guards pushed Ava’s head onto the table. She felt it shaking underneath her; Ruka was tearing helplessly at her restraints. _“Ava!”_

__Tengu smoothed Ava’s hair away and laid his hand on the back of her neck. Ava didn’t need to be able to see to know that the point of the needle was quivering just an inch or two above her exposed skin. She tried to think, to pray, even to beg Ruka not to give in, but her mind had gone white. Her limbs twitched. Breathing had suddenly become very difficult.

“This is your choice, Ruka,” Tengu said. “I suggest you make it quickly, before my hand slips.”

“She went to World’s End!” Ruka shouted.

There was a silence. The pressure on Ava’s head and neck lifted. Someone grabbed her hair, pulling her back into a sitting position. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks, and she realised her nose was running. She hadn’t even noticed herself starting to cry, only now breathing was even harder and her ribs spasmed with sobs. Dirty-tasting hair had found its way into her mouth, but she was too busy sobbing to be able to even try and dislodge it.

“See,” Tengu said soothingly, “that wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

Ava’s gut felt like it was trying to uncurl inside her abdominal cavity. Now the immediate danger had passed, the realisation of what Ruka had done was only just beginning to take hold. “Ruka…”

“I’m sorry, Ava.” Ruka’s face was a mess of pain and guilt. “I couldn’t let that happen to you… I’m so sorry.”

“As touching as this is,” Tengu said, “I think it’s time you went back in your cells.”

“What are you going to do to her?” Ruka demanded as the pair of them were re-cuffed and dragged to their feet.

“To Rei? I’m sure I’ll think of something fitting. Maybe I’ll send Eyegore to retrieve her.”

_Eyegore…_ the Southern Hive killing machine Luquin had mentioned. Now Ava thought about it, she’d heard of him before that. She wasn’t sure exactly who he was, but the desert-dwellers had spoken of him with fear.

“Of course, you’re a foreigner,” Tengu said. “He’s my… let’s say solution to difficult problems. Sometimes even to easy ones. And it’s been a little while since I took him off the leash. Hivers from the south, they’re… about as bloodthirsty as Shek, only they don’t have a sense of honour to hold them back. I think he’d relish the opportunity. You know, if she’s _very _lucky, maybe she’ll arrive here with all her limbs intact, but I can’t guarantee it.”

“Bastard is too light a word for you,” Ruka snarled. “You absolute fucking _c____—”_

__One of the samurai struck her across the face. She reeled back, her legs wobbling. Tengu shook his head with a sigh. “Oh, Ruka. You should learn to keep that anger in check. Maybe Lady Sanda can teach you some manners.”

Ruka glared at him with seething hatred. Her lower lip was split, and beginning to swell. “What does Lady Sanda have to do with this?”

“She did tell me she’d be paying a visit when I was done here. I think she wants reprisals for her ruined reputation, you know. Dear me, you two really are a prime example of why you shouldn’t mess with the Noble Circle.”

The pair of them were returned to their cages. Ava wasn’t pushed into hers so much as thrown in. The door was slammed, and the guards laughed derisively as she lifted her face from the filthy ground.

“I’m sure you’ll have some company soon,” one of them said.

“Better be glad they’re sending a Hiver. You know what I’d do to her if they sent me ?” The other licked his lips and leered at Ava. She suspected he didn’t mean it, he was just trying to shock her, but the knowledge of what Rei had been through as a slave was enough to make her want to scream and swear at him through the bars. But her voice didn’t seem to want to obey her, and her arms and legs shook as she tried to move.

“Maybe you should pray for her. Who knows, your useless god might listen this time.”

The footsteps died away, leaving Ava alone with the flickering, buzzing light for company. She leaned back against the bars, tears burning at her eyes, and began to sob again as the last shred of hope abandoned her.

[](https://pelandreth.wixsite.com/thewanderersroad/3-12-communication)   
  



	5. Safehouse

The burning sun, glaring down on Kat’s blistered face with the force of a thousand flames, was what awoke her. Blinking the grit from her eyes, she tried to stretch out an arm to shield herself and realised she no longer had the strength to move. Instead she lay still, curled up on her side, and stared at the wall of rock just inches from her nose. The rock offered no shade, and for a few minutes she was forced to contend with the blazing heat and the pain that erupted through her body at the slightest of twitches.

Little by little she regained some of her energy. She curled the fingers of her left hand, made a fist, and slowly unclenched them again. At first, the small movements took significant effort, but her fear that the paladins would come down the path and discover her soon outweighed her exhaustion. She rolled onto her belly and began to drag herself down the path, using one hand and one elbow for propulsion. Her elbow soon started to sting with the grit, but she clenched her teeth and forced herself to keep going.

If she managed nothing else, she was getting off the path.

The world was filled with bright blueness from a cloudless sky. Kat wasn’t sure what time it was, or how much of it had passed, but she guessed it was probably around noon. Her stomach rumbled, and as she ran her tongue over her lips, she tasted nothing but salt and grit. Water. She needed water, and soon, before she collapsed completely.

Getting off the path was not an easy task, as it was flanked by rocky outcrops on both sides. Kat continued to follow it, willing her useless legs to start working again, staring blindly into a blurry haze that was only half caused by heat. Her head span. She didn’t remember having hit her head, but she was dizzy, and on several occasions she ended up slumping on the ground until the worst of the faintness passed. 

Everything hurt. Her face, her swollen hand, her scraped knees, and a million and one tiny bumps and bruises. She could only imagine how pitiful she would look to an outsider, crawling and panting and hissing with pain. Maybe there was a paladin nearby, watching her struggle for his own amusement before he moved in to take her back to Rebirth.

Eventually the steep downwards slope gave way to a gentler one, leading out into a grassy, rocky area dotted with trees. Kat crawled to one of the trees, which afforded some shade from the glaring sun, and allowed the dizziness to take over.

When she came to again, she was lying face down in the dirt, with scratchy grass and hard rocks digging against her. She tried to sit up again, but failed, and ended up leaning against the tree for support. As the darker spots in her vision began to fade she realised that she was not alone out here — there was a storm-house, not twenty yards from where she was slumped, that she hadn’t noticed when she’d last been awake. She stared at it, her heart pounding, but there were no outward signs of life, and no indication that she had been spotted. Slowly, she used the tree to help her to her feet, and walked on shaky legs towards the house.

Kat knew she was taking a risk. The house could easily be inhabited by paladins or someone else who wouldn’t hesitate to send her back. On the other hand, maybe there would be someone who could help her. Risky or not, Kat knew there wasn’t likely to be another house like this for miles, and the alternative to seeking help was to lie down and die like a mangy, forgotten bonedog. She limped up to the door, gripping the wall for support, then raised her uninjured hand and knocked.

There was no response. Kat knocked again, this time harder, and the door creaked open at her touch.

Unlocked. That suggested one of two things. Either the place had been abandoned, or whoever lived here was so unconcerned with people coming down this way that they didn’t care much for security. There was a possible third option Kat didn’t want to think about, which was that the occupant had gone out briefly and was intending on returning. She went inside, pain shooting through her knees with every step, and peered around inside the gloom for something that might confirm one of her theories.

The first thing Kat noticed was that the place was surprisingly tidy, though covered in a thin film of dust that stirred around her bare feet as she moved through it. Pots and pans had been neatly stacked on the table, along with a few bowls and eating utensils. There was also a jug of water, its rim covered with a protective piece of cloth, and when Kat picked it up, she noticed it was full. Someone had left a piece of paper half-underneath it, but the water on the outside of the jug had left the writing blurred and unrecognisable, and she had more important things to do than try and decipher the smeared letters. She sat down on one of the stools and drank straight from the jug, not bothering to rinse out the dusty cup lying next to it. She drank until the water was gone, and it was only then that she wondered if she should have saved some of it for later.

She lifted the lid of each of the pans, wondering if there were any leftovers inside, but they were clean and empty. The only thing left on the table that seemed to be of any value to her was a meat knife, which she took with her on her inspection of the rest of the house. As she peered around the screen that had been used to divide the eating area from the sleeping area, she saw two beds, neither of which had been slept in recently, and a small heap of blankets on each one. A spider had spun a web between the screen and the wall, just above the bed on the right-hand side.

Kat forced herself to relax; whoever had been living in this house was unlikely to be coming back any time soon. She left the knife on one of the beds, though she took care to keep it within reach of her, as she started rummaging through one of the nearby barrels. Her heart leapt as she realised it was a food barrel, and there was still food inside; it was wrapped in paper, but it was instantly recognisable — by shape and by texture — as a foodcube. Kat had never really enjoyed the dry, disappointing loaves of squashed-down bread and vegetable matter, and indeed hadn’t eaten one since her last escape from a slave camp, but right now, it seemed like the most wonderful thing in the world.

Hugging the precious loaf against her like it was a baby, Kat carried it over to the table. At first she tried to show restraint, cutting slices off with the knife, but the foodcube was too dry and crumbly and her left hand too clumsy to be able to use it efficiently. In the end she gave up and just used her teeth instead. Somehow the stolen foodcube managed to taste both horrible and delicious at the same time.

The dizziness was coming back. She could feel every muscle in her face burning, not just the brand, and the table in front of her was beginning to blur. She staggered, nearly tripping on her own chains, and grabbed the table to stop herself falling. It was the right hand she used, and the sudden movement caused fire to blaze up her arm. Her swollen fingers slid off the edge as her legs buckled completely, sending her crashing to the floor.

She wasn’t sure how long she lay there, shaking and shivering and desperately trying to claw herself back into a sitting position, but at some point she gave up trying to move. She could feel a bruise on her forehead from where she’d banged it on the table leg, just another injury to add to the pile.

“Fucking hell, Kat,” she mumbled, staring up at the underside of the table. “Of all the stupid plans…”

But stupid as the plan may have been, she’d made her bed and she was damned if she was going to give up on it. If she died here, Rei would never know what had happened to her, or to the others. The United Cities would come after her and either kill her or drag her to Tengu’s Vault — assuming she was even still alive.

Summoning the last of her strength, Kat reached for the nearest stool and used it to push herself back to her feet. Through the pain and the dizziness, her brain tried to organise a list. First-aid kit… she needed a first-aid kit. Preferably a good one, with burn ointments and things to flush out wounds with. Once she got her injuries seen to, she could try and find some tools to remove the shackles, or at the very least something to detach her wrists and ankles from one another. Then she could think of some way to hide her slave-clothes and shaven head, and work out the quickest and safest route to a town that wouldn’t immediately recapture her. From there… she would have to find a way to warn Rei, if it wasn’t too late already.

But even looking for a first-aid kit took more energy than Kat had. She sat down heavily on the stool and laid her head on the table. Even getting as far as the bed was as daunting as trying to climb a mountain. There was no way she was going to be able to do anything right now, not when she was still so weak. When had she last had a proper meal? Not since the paladin had given her his rations back in Okran’s Shield, and before that, it had been at the Spine Canyon just before their food was stolen. How long ago had that been? A week? Maybe more, maybe less. The days had all merged together, and Kat no longer had any real sense of time.

She fell asleep at the table, or passed out, she wasn’t sure which. When she woke again it was getting dark, with only a faint orange smear of light coming in through the grimy storm-house windows. She felt a little stronger for her rest, but her head still swam when she tried to lift it from the table. The world was on fire, but cold fire, fire that burned and froze her at the same time. She shivered.

_Light,_ she thought. _I need light, before the sun goes down._ She pushed herself into a standing position, not without some difficulty, and found a switch on the wall. A lamp flickered into life above her head, humming quietly, and she realised the circuit had been wired by someone who didn’t know much about electrics. A battery bank at the side of the room, half-covered by a blanket, was clearly the source of the power, but given the frayed ends of the interconnecting cables, she was impressed it worked at all. She just hoped it wasn’t about to start smoking.

It was a slow process, trying to find anything in the house. The light kept going out as the wires slipped in and out of their position, and of the various boxes she could see, several were locked with no key in sight. Kat didn’t bother trying to brute-force them. Instead, she focused what little energy she had on taking an inventory of everything else. A few rolls of bandages, which were better than nothing. A few more foodcubes. And there on a high shelf, something that made Kat’s heart leap with hope — a box of tools.

Getting the tools off the shelf was no easy task. She dragged a stool up, but the chains on her legs and her feelings of faintness caused her to stumble before she’d even managed to stand on it. If she’d been feeling more in her usual mind, she might have left it until after she’d had a proper rest, but her instincts were screaming at her to get out of the house before its occupants came back. She pushed herself onto the stool, careful not to aggravate her injuries, and stood up, reaching out for the toolbox.

Time seemed to skip. First her fingers were clutched around the side of the toolbox, trying desperately to pull it down, then she blinked and she was on the floor, half-lying across a broken shelf and surrounded by scattered tools she didn’t know the names of. Her body ached with even more bruises, and her head was no clearer than it had been before she’d fainted, but she’d gotten what she wanted. She rolled onto her back, ignoring the hard edge of a spanner pressing into her, and giggled with relief and the ridiculousness of it all. The sound was so surprising she giggled again, and for a few minutes she lay and stared up at the ceiling, sure she was going insane, but welcoming it all the same. The strange feeling of giddiness, however, faded quickly, leaving her with aching sides and a fresh streak of fire in her cheek.

Since the bandages wouldn’t be much use without water to clean the burns out, Kat opted to use the tools first instead. She wasn’t entirely sure she knew what she was doing, and the weary sensible side of her told her to put that saw down now before she took her fingers off with it, but she was doing something, and that was comforting.

She started with her ankles, testing the shackles to see which tools might stand a chance against the locks. Her frustrations grew as most of the tools proved to be completely useless, and she nearly gave up at that point. The fire was hot and cold and burned all through her, racking her body with shivers.

_I’m not some pathetic slave, and I’m not about to stay looking like one. _She clenched her jaw to stop herself from sobbing like a useless child and attacked the shackles with renewed determination. This time, she slid the tip of the saw down the joint where the bracelet slid closed and moved it back and forth, trying to avoid hitting her exposed ankle. It was a slow process, but eventually the comparatively flimsy lock broke, and the shackle fell apart. Kat set the saw down and rubbed her ankle. It was slightly bruised where the iron had chafed against it, with a few blisters at the top of her foot, but it was free of its chain at least.

_One down, four more to go, _she thought as her heart sank.

Whilst she had the technique pretty much down, the shackle on her left ankle posed a far greater challenge than her right. Wielding the saw with her left hand was easier when she had some space to work with, but the rest of her kept getting in the way, and she had to be extra careful not to catch any skin on the teeth of the blade. It took her almost an hour, but she managed it, and her legs felt far lighter for it.

Her wrists were even more difficult. When she eventually got her right wrist free, she discovered her burned hand had fused to the metal, and she had to bite down on the side of her robe to stop herself from screaming too loudly as she dislodged it. As she moved her left hand, the right shackle was dragged with it on its chain, but there was no removing the other cuff, nor did Kat want to risk bringing a saw anywhere close to her throat. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do for now.

While taking inventory, Kat had noticed there was a boiler tank by the door. She couldn’t work out how to switch it on, and with the dodgy wiring she wasn’t even sure it was worth the risk, so she took some cold water out of the tank and carried it to the table. The cold heat from the fire flared up a little as she set the bowl down, but this time it did not burn through her, and her head had begun to return to a vague state of normalcy. She prayed her fever hadn’t been caused by her injuries becoming infected. Ruka had almost died when that had happened to her, and that had been with Kat and Rei desperately trying to save her.

Kat dunked a bandage in the water and tied it around her forehead, hoping it would soothe her brow a little. Then she took the rag that had been used to cover the water jug and dabbed the worst of the dirt off her blistered hand, using her teeth to help wrap and tie the bandage. It wasn’t very sanitary, but it was better than nothing. She cleaned the grit out of her knees without making any noise, though she did flinch at the stinging water.

She approached her face with more squeamishness than she’d done her other injuries, not wanting to think about how bad it probably looked. When she poked at it through the damp cloth, she thought she could feel the shape of the brand, and the sour taste of anger and helplessness caught at her tongue. She finished cleaning the sweat and dust away, and eyed her rippling reflection in the bowl. The light was too dim for her to be able to see much, and she couldn’t tell from the water how obvious the brand was, but her glowing eyes looked like those of an older, sadder person. She jerked in surprise, nearly knocking the bowl onto the floor, and turned away.

One shackle still swinging from her wrist, she struggled out of the musty orange uniform that had marked her out as a Rebirth slave. A louse, dark and fat with blood, came crawling from the seam of her trousers as she pulled them off, and she squeaked in shock. The robes must have been infested when she’d got them, but she’d had more pressing things on her mind up until this point. She slammed her heel on the louse, leaving a reddish smear across the floorboards, and scratched at the little bites she hadn’t even noticed before.

“That’s… oh shit, that’s disgusting.”

She ended up stripping completely, not trusting the lice to have been confined to the robes. As she unwound the modesty bandage from her chest, the medallion fell out and clattered onto the floor. She picked it up and turned it over in her hand, then slipped it around her neck under the collar. The simple movement used up the last of her energy, and she collapsed onto the bed.

She fell asleep like that, the light on, her left hand curled around the handle of the knife, the blankets piled thick and high on top of her as a defence against the icy fire. It burned low but it was still there, waiting for a sign of weakness before it struck again. In spite of the fever Kat found herself sleeping well, almost as if she’d spent countless nights away from a proper bed, in a cold quarry filled with cages and a dusty desert filled with threats.

It was not the light that woke Kat, but the noise. Her eyes fluttered, the sound not having fully registered in her newly conscious mind, then snapped open, suddenly alert. She listened for the noise again, and she heard it; the muffled exertions of someone treading up the steps, closely followed by a creak as the front door was pushed open.

Kat was out of bed in an instant. The fire tore through her aching joints, briefly consuming her mind, but she forced herself to think past it. An intruder, or more likely, the occupant’s return.

She peered around the screen to see who had just entered. A Scorchlander woman, dressed in dark rags with two swords criss-crossed against her back and a backpack she’d dropped by the door. Her silver hair was short and tufty, almost a boy’s cut, but she was lot older than her hairstyle suggested; late thirties at the youngest, but probably at least forty. She’d noticed the light had been left on, and was looking at it with a shrewd expression on her face. Kat watched her for a second, sizing her up, then ran forward with the knife.

If the woman had been surprised to see a bald, naked girl running at her, she showed no sign of it. She simply sidestepped Kat’s attack, and Kat plunged into the table. A moment later Kat found herself on the floor, a slender but deadly-looking blade pointed at her throat. “I wouldn’t.”

What had she been thinking? Kat stared up at the woman, trying to read some expression into those glowing amber eyes. “I’m sorry, I just thought you might—”

“Try and hurt you?” The woman chuckled. “Depends. If you were one of those paladins, I might.” The sword was taken away, and Kat was left to scramble into a sitting position. “Trying to get the jump on me when I was distracted was a smart move. But now you know I’m a good fighter, trying to attack me again is probably not a smart move. And I don’t want to hurt you. So let’s try this again… without the weapons.” She returned the sword to her back. Slowly and reluctantly, Kat released her death grip on the knife and allowed it to clatter to the floor.

“Anyone else with you, kid? Anyone hiding up on the roof or in a cupboard that I should probably know about?”

As tempting as it was to lie, Kat knew the woman would see straight through it. “Just me,” she admitted.

The woman’s eyebrows rose. “You escaped Rebirth _on your own?”_

“Yeah.”

“Well,” said the woman after a silence, “that’s impressive.”

Kat crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly very aware that she was naked in front of a complete stranger. The woman took the blanket off the battery bank and threw it to her. It smelled like smoke and frazzled circuits, but Kat was grateful for the chance to cover herself. “You’re mad at me, right?”

“Mad at you?”

“I broke into your house.”

“Oh.” The woman chuckled. “No, this isn’t my house. Well, I suppose it kind of _is,_ or was, but I gave it over to Flotsam’s use long ago. This place here” — she indicated their surroundings — “is a safehouse I set up for people who escaped the Holy Nation, Rebirth especially. I know escapees tend to use the path heading to the north, as it’s one of the quieter routes, so I did what I could to make this place useful for them.”

“Maybe you should make it more obvious,” Kat said. “A sign on the door, or something.”

“Maybe. Problem is, most who escape Rebirth can’t read. I left a note under the jug, but I realise now that might have been a bad place to put it.” She extended a hand to Kat. “I’m Moll, by the way.”

“Kat.” Kat shook it, as well as she could left-handed.

Moll’s mouth twitched. “I was actually offering you a hand up.”

“Oh, right…” The heat was back in Kat’s face, though this time it was from embarrassment. “Sorry.”

“Sit down.” Moll guided her over to the table. “Let’s get rid of that jewellery the paladins gave you.”

Moll was deft at picking locks, far quicker than Ava. It took no time at all for the collar to fall away, and for the remaining shackle on Kat’s wrist to spring open. Moll tossed the shackles unceremoniously into a corner and put her thumb under Kat’s chin. Kat resisted the urge to pull away as Moll looked at the brand. “Well, that could be a lot worse, but I imagine it hurts like a bitch. I’ve got some ointment somewhere, if someone hasn’t taken it.”

The ointment was cold and soothing against the brand. Moll gently pressed a strip of gauze over the top, where it stuck to the ointment. It made Kat’s face feel even stiffer than before, but she didn’t complain. She lifted her own hand to the gauze, touching the edges, and the excess ointment came away on her fingers.

“Don’t touch it,” Moll said automatically, as she packed the ointment away.

Kat let her hand fall. “Flotsam.”

“Come again?”

“Earlier. You said something about Flotsam. Are there more of you?”

“Plenty of us. Escapees from the Holy Nation, like yourself. Only you don’t sound like you’re from there originally. You’re a swamp-lander, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“Anyway, the Holy Nation doesn’t like us very much. We tend to upset them rather a lot. You should see some of the things they’ve put on my bounty poster. One of these days, when we have the numbers, we’re going to _really _make those paladins piss themselves.” She grinned, but quickly stopped at Kat’s sombre expression. “Something wrong?”

“Oh, sorry.” Moll’s words had stirred up memories of the stone camp, and the outrage Kat had felt upon seeing her face plastered across a United Cities poster. “I was just thinking. Hey, do you know how to get to World’s End?”

“World’s End? It’s not that far from our village, a few hours maybe. Why do you ask?”

“I need to talk to someone there.”

Moll’s expression shifted, almost imperceptibly. “Oh?”

“She’s my friend. We fled the United Cities together.” Kat knew the United Cities and the Holy Nation had been at war for years, but something told her Moll hadn’t taken an enemy-of-my-enemy approach to fighting the paladins. “I need to warn her about something. Something really important.”

“This friend of yours, is she a Shek?”

“I — how did you know?”

“She wrote to me.” Moll refilled the water jug and poured Kat a cup. “Well, well. It’s a small world. Here, drink this. You need fluids.”

“Wait. _Rei?”_ Kat took the cup without even looking at it. “She’s in World’s End, she’s actually there… oh, thank _fuck.”_

“She was looking to join us at Flotsam. I wasn’t aware she had a friend in Rebirth, otherwise I’d have offered to help get you out.”

“_She _doesn’t know I was sent to Rebirth. And that’s part of what I need to tell her. Please, will you take a message to World’s End for me? It’s really, _really_ urgent. She could be in danger.”

Moll looked at her, taking in her earnest expression. “Our messenger girl should be back from her last trip to World’s End when I return. I can certainly send something with her. But I don’t like to leave you on your own here.”

“I’ll be OK. This is more important, promise.”

Moll hesitated. “We should leave it until you’re strong enough to travel. Then you can come with me to Flotsam and give Pia your message directly.”

“I _am_ strong enough,” Kat said. It almost felt true; the fire felt weaker today, its attacks less frequent. It still had some grip on her muscles, but her head seemed clear enough. “If I need to make the journey, I’ll make the journey. I’m tougher than I look.”

“I don’t deny that. But the final stretch of the journey is pretty risky. We’ll be going through some dangerous territory, there are cannibals…”

Kat drank water to refresh her suddenly dry mouth. Cannibals. Of course journeying through the northern lands would be dangerous, and her tired, feverish state would only increase the risk. But if it meant she was in time to save Rei, it was a risk she was willing to take.

“How far away is it?”

“Three and a half hours, maybe?”

“I can do it.”

Moll looked at her for a minute.

“OK,” she said finally. “You can come with me back to Flotsam. But if you want to travel, you need to stick close to me. And make sure you do _exactly_ what I say, all right? For both our sakes.”

“When can we go?”

“Fucking hell, you don’t let up, do you? We’ll leave after we’ve had some lunch and I’ve had a chance to rest. Took me a while to get here, and I was carrying a load of stuff with me.” She indicated the bag by the door. “Think I’ll be leaving this here…”

“What’s in there?”

“Supplies for the safehouse.”

“Oh, yeah… Moll?” Kat said, fiddling with her cup.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“Oh. That’s OK.” She took the cup off Kat and refilled it, then passed it back. “Have some more water. And let’s see if we can find you something to wear that isn’t those ugly orange rags. I brought some clothes over from Flotsam… they might fit…”

The clothes that had been in Moll’s backpack were slightly damp. Moll switched on the boiler and laid them on the metal surface to dry. “You’re probably going to get soaked going through the Floodlands, but there’s no reason you can’t be comfortable before we set off. When we get back to Flotsam, we’ll see about getting you a bath as well.”

Kat’s eyes lit up. “You guys have _baths?”_

“Uh… yeah, we do. I thought they were kind of a standard thing.”

“I used to live in the desert,” Kat admitted. “Water wasn’t one of those things we liked to use too much of.”

“The swamps _and_ the desert. You must have done a fair bit of travelling then. How old _are_ you?”

“Seventeen. I think. I was born in the month of the Phoenix, so… yeah, I must still be seventeen.”

“Born in the month of the Phoenix, were you?” Moll said, eyeing the patch of gauze on Kat’s cheek. “Seems apt.”

Kat looked down at the table, fiddling with her cup. “Because of how I was a Holy Nation slave?”

“Fuck no. The Phoenix isn’t just a stuck-up religious nutcase, you know. The word referred to a bird originally. That’s why the constellation looks like a bird rather than a man. Phoenixes live extraordinarily long lives, and then they are consumed by the fires and reborn. Some say the fire makes them stronger.”

“They’re just stories though, aren’t they?” Kat said, unable to help herself. “If a bird caught on fire it would die.”

“I don’t know,” Moll said thoughtfully. “I like to think of them as metaphors, rather than stories.”

Kat just shrugged. She was beginning to think she was getting too old for stories.


	6. Organic

Scrap was bored.

Rei was bored too. The only difference between her and the bonedog, she reflected, was that she wasn’t quite at the stage of chewing the table legs yet. She lifted him onto her lap before he could do any obvious damage and fed him a few crumbs from the sandwich she’d been eating. Scrap gobbled them up, then rammed his nose into her stomach, waiting for more food to fall.

It had been a slow morning, but at least there was none of the hangover that had made her feel so sorry for herself the day before. Rei was pretty sure the barkeep thought she was an alcoholic; he’d been shooting her wary looks ever since she’d walked in earlier. Then again, maybe it was just because she had Scrap with her. She hoped he hadn’t noticed the table legs.

Having Scrap around was a comfort, but he also reminded her of Kat. The bonedog had been Kat’s idea in the first place. She’d been so adamant about it that she’d chased down the trade caravan before it could leave town, and had practically pushed the squirming puppy into Rei’s arms.

“You don’t have to buy him,” she’d told Rei, “but at least hold him! Look how cute he is!”

“Kid, we have a schedule to keep,” the caravan leader had said.

“Oh, just five minutes! Please! It’ll do her good!”

“If you’re not going to buy him, we can’t afford to waste time hanging around.”

Scrap had chosen that moment to lick Rei’s nose. “I’ll take him,” she’d said defiantly to the caravan leader, who’d been trying to prise him out of her grip. “How much d’you want for him?”

Now Kat was gone along with Ava and Ruka and the house, Scrap was the last link Rei had to that life in Bark. Her last remaining friend, too. Scrap seemed to be able to tell what she was thinking, because he licked her fingers and looked up at her with soulful eyes.

“I know, Scrap. I miss them too.”

Her gloomy thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a small band of Tech Hunters. They were accompanied by a level of raucous noise Rei had come to expect from the Tech Hunters. Scrap whined and buried his head in the folds of her shirt.

“Let’s have one or two for the road, shall we?”

“Mik, you’d better not be getting drunk when you’re our navigator.”

“My innate sense of direction,” said Mik, “is entirely unaffected by alcohol.”

“That’s what you said last time!”

“And _then_ you wandered right into a nest of gutters,” Jared said. Rei jumped, nearly knocking Scrap off her lap. With her back to the door, she hadn’t realised he was in the bar, and now it was too late to escape. “Surprised you still have all your limbs.”

“I got three eggs out of it,” Mik said proudly. “They sell for a good price, you know.”

“I know. I was there, remember? I was the one who got knocked down trying to save your sorry ass.”

“Oh, yeah… You know, you should come with us. Stab a few more gutters.”

“Mik, do I look like I’m in much of a state to be fighting?”

It was dark under the table. Rei ducked down under the pretence of dropping something, and peered out at the eight pairs of legs clustered around the bar. Scrap’s muzzle nudged into her hand. She patted him absently.

“Let’s get that table,” one of the Tech Hunters said.

Rei didn’t have time to retrieve herself, as the group took seats at what had formerly been her table. It was a large table, and if it hadn’t been Rei would have been discovered, but the Tech Hunters’ feet were still uncomfortably close to hers. She moved to the centre of the table, her back resting against the support, and hoped they weren’t planning on staying around for too long.

“You not drinking, Spade?” someone asked.

_Oh, great. They’re both here._

“No. Still recovering from the other night.”

“You were never a lightweight.”

Spade’s voice took an edge. “Funny how being enslaved and half-starved for nearly a _year_ affects your tolerance for alcohol.”

There was an awkward silence, broken only when Mik said, “Hey, has anyone here ever been to Stobe’s Gamble?”

“Yup,” Jared said. “Stinks of sulphur, constantly rains ash, wouldn’t go back. And the fucking land-bats…”

“You been up to the mountains in the west?”

“No. Why?”

“I heard there’s a city up there. Those anti-slavery nutjobs…”

Jared coughed pointedly.

“Tinfist’s lot. They all live up there. Heard the place is impossible to assault. Tinfist himself could probably snap anyone in half who tried it. Y’know, that guy’s gotta be insane. You don’t get Skeletons as slaves, and I’ve never known a Skeleton who cared about normal, regular people like us…”

“Don’t let Iyo hear you say that.”

“Iyo schmiyo. Did he stand up for you and Spade when the bugman got mad at you both because you dared ask for injury pay after the blood spiders? Don’t give me that look, Beanhop. You’re not like that guy.”

“Oh, I see, so we’re only_ bugmen_ when you don’t like us.”

“That’s not what I meant…”

The group began to bicker. Rei shifted to get comfortable and banged her head on the underside of the table. There was a very brief pause in the argument, but then everyone piled in to try and fill the silence, and Rei relaxed.

It was some time before they’d made it up with one another, and by that time it was approaching mid-afternoon. The table rattled above Rei’s head as drinks were drained and cups were slammed down, and the group headed to the door as one.

“Take care out there,” Jared said. “You guys are pretty fun to drink with.”

“I’ll bring you back a gutter egg,” Mik promised.

“What would I do with a gutter egg?”

“What _wouldn’t_ you do with a gutter egg?”

“Can we _not_ go wandering into gutter nests this time?” Beanhop said wearily. “I’d prefer to keep all my limbs.”

“Oh, cheer up. I’m sure a few good Skeleton upgrades would be far superior to that weak Hiver flesh of yours…”

This time, the argument started outside the bar, and Beanhop’s irritated voice was soon little more than a faint stirring on the wind. Rei looked down at Scrap, who’d given up hoping his mistress would move and was lying quietly across her legs, and wiped away a sweat she hadn’t even realised had formed.

“You comfortable down there?” came a familiar voice. “Or do you want me to pass you a cushion?”

Rei squeaked, the heat flooding her face. Jared squatted down so his face was level with hers, and reached over to give Scrap a pat. “Hi. Anyway, I wanted to say… well, basically Spade and I wanted to say…”

“We’re sorry,” Spade said from Rei’s other side.

“Fucking hell, why did you have to do that?”

“Coz you hid under a table for half an hour just to avoid us. Also, surprise apology.”

“I don’t like being surprised.”

“OK,” Jared said, “then we’re sorry for that, too.”

“Basically, we fucked up the other day,” Spade added.

“Turns out we need to work on our communication skills,” Jared said. He scratched the back of his neck. “And uh, I’d like to personally apologise for the stuff I said. You were just trying to help.”

Rei flicked away a ball of dust. “Just another poor decision I’ve made, apparently. Right?”

“Ah… yeahhh.” Jared exhaled slowly. “I didn’t actually mean what I said. I know all that stuff’s been preying on your mind, and… after you pointed out to me I was kind of being an asshole, I guess I wanted to strike a nerve. And I’m sorry for that. I really am.”

Rei was scraping dust from under her fingernail. She didn’t look at Jared. “Right.”

“For what it’s worth, Rei, you haven’t been making poor choices any more than the rest of us have. You rescued us all from a shitty life, killed the bastards who’d been tormenting us, and took responsibility for a journey that was always going to be dangerous. And through all of that, you made the best calls you could with the knowledge you had. Yeah, not listening to Lekko may have been stupid, but you had no way of knowing if her advice was going to work or not. And you didn’t know about the cannibals when you took us through Bast. So yeah. I’m sorry for what I said to you.”

“Oh. Sorry for calling you a bastard then, I guess.”

“To be fair,” Jared said, “I kind of deserved that.”

“He did,” Spade agreed.

“Also Rei, if you need to talk, we’re here. You don’t have to hide away… I guess what we’re saying is we still want to be your friends, if you’ll let us. Rei?”

“Sounds good,” Rei mumbled.

Spade hesitated. “I know you’re not too fond of being touched, but… can I give you a hug?”

Rei nodded. It felt odd, and it took her a second to realise why; it was the first time she’d had that kind of physical contact since Kat had hugged her goodbye in the slave camp. “Me and Jared, we owe you and your friends our freedom. And if there’s anything we can do, we’ll help you. Right, Jared?”

“We got your back,” Jared said solemnly. “Us hornless need to stick together, right?”

Rei slowly let go of Spade. She forced a smile. “Right.”

“So, shall we sit under this table while the barkeep gives us funny looks, or should we go back to the University? We can take bets on what’s pissing Finch off today.”

Rei chuckled. “Sure, I guess.”

The town felt surprisingly quiet as they passed through it; Pia had gone back to Flotsam the day before, carrying the supplies she’d been sent to fetch in the first place. Rei couldn’t say she missed the girl’s incessant babbling, but she hoped she hadn’t run into any trouble on the way there. It wasn’t just Pia, either. Most of the Tech Hunters had gone off on expeditions, and the only ones left seemed to be retired or recovering from injuries. They didn’t pass anyone as they walked up to the University, and the downstairs area was completely empty when they went in.

“So, what do you reckon?” Jared said.

“Um, what?”

Jared nodded at the ceiling as Finch’s raised voice drifted down the ramp. “Think he’s still sore about the fact we don’t have good enough tech for him?”

“I’m sure someone just breathed too loudly in his precious personal space,” Spade said, sitting down at the table. “Fuck that guy.”

The twins looked at Rei expectantly. She just shrugged and pulled Scrap onto her lap again. “The Machinists helped all of us. Maybe we shouldn’t be slagging them off in their own headquarters.”

“We’re not slagging _all_ of them off,” Spade said defensively. “Only the—”

“Mind what you say, Spade.”

Spade spun in her seat. Iyo had just come down the ramp, a heap of papers tucked under one arm. From his gait and the slight hunch in his shoulders, Rei guessed he’d been worn down by whatever was going on upstairs. He disappeared behind one of the screens, and for a few minutes all they heard was rustling, presumably as documents were filed and organised. Spade folded her arms and glowered at the table.

“Actually, I need to speak to you, Rei,” Iyo said as he re-emerged. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but Mr Finch…”

“... wants us gone?” Spade interrupted. “Yeah, thought he might.”

Iyo stared at her until she shifted in her seat and looked away. Turning to Rei, he said, “I’ve persuaded him to allow you some time to get yourselves established elsewhere. Where that would be is a different matter. I’m aware you can’t go back to the United Cities…”

“What do you mean?” Rei said quickly.

Iyo’s metal face was as impassive as ever, but Rei thought he was giving her an odd look. “The humans among you still look like their slaves, and you three, being hornless…”

“Oh, yeah. Of course. I forgot about that, yeah.”

Jared nudged her foot under the table. Rei fiddled with her hands, fighting to keep her expression neutral. After a long moment, Iyo looked away from her. “You are, of course, more than welcome to set up base here in World’s End. Just maybe, ah, maybe not in Mr Finch’s laboratory. If you require assistance with funds, we can help you.”

Shame flooded Rei’s face. “Thank you,” she mumbled.

“Maybe this is something for you to discuss with the others. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to be doing.” He turned and went back up the ramp, the hunch in his shoulders more pronounced than before.

“Poor guy,” Spade muttered.

Rei, on the other hand, had more pressing concerns. “We can’t take their money.”

“Why not?” Jared said. “We don’t exactly have much of it ourselves.”

Rei dropped her voice. “But we’ve been lying to them.”

“Have we? I don’t remember him specifically asking if you had a bounty. If he never asked, you never lied.”

“Well, maybe, but…”

“Anyway, settling in World’s End sounds pretty sweet,” Jared said. “Not much bothers us up here, except for the rare cannibal. It’s the safest town for miles.”

“I guess.”

“You’re still thinking of going to Flotsam, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know.” Rei absentmindedly stroked Scrap’s fur. “If you two stayed in World’s End… you’d go back to being Tech Hunters, right?”

“Not really a thing we’ve discussed yet, to be honest,” Jared said. “And I guess… even if we do, we’re not really in a great state to be exploring ruins right now. Still recovering from being half-starved and chained up in the desert for a year.” For the first time, Rei heard bitterness in his voice. “I guess being kidnapped and sold is pretty shit, but being enslaved as a punishment for something you haven’t even done kind of smarts too.”

“Hash smuggling, right?”

“Yeah, they planted that shit right on us,” Spade said. “Asked for a bribe to let it slide. We didn’t have any bribe money, told them where to shove it, next thing we know we have a half-dozen swords in our faces.”

“Fucking bastards.”

“What happened to you, anyway?” Spade said. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Kidnapped. Got swarmed by a bunch of manhunters and couldn’t get away in time. Landed a few good hits on some of them. Don’t really remember what happened after that.”

“Were you alone?”

“Yeah.” Rei hunched her shoulders, staring at the table. “It’s a bad idea, being out in the desert on your own.”

“Well,” Spade said tentatively, “you don’t have to be on your own now. If you don’t want to be.”

“I guess. Um… I think I should take Scrap outside. Don’t want him messing the floors.” It felt like a flimsy excuse, but the fact Scrap was starting to whine and wriggle on her lap was enough. Rei set him down. He ran to the door, sniffing the breeze, then looked back at her expectantly.

“Better take him then,” Spade said with a hollow laugh. “Wouldn’t want to upset the bugman.”

“Guess not.”

Rei was sure Jared was staring at her as she left, but she didn’t look back. The more she thought about it all — the lies, the half-truths, the niggling fear that she was abandoning the others — the worse she felt.

Even though the sun was still high, it was a cold and cloudy day, and the fresh mountain air caused Rei to shiver slightly. She rubbed her bare arms, wishing she had a coat, but there had been no need for warm clothes back in the desert. If their money hadn’t been about to dry up, she’d have considered a visit to the armourer. As it was, they were going to need to find some kind of employment in the town if they wanted to stay.

Rei wasn’t at all sure she wanted to stay. World’s End was safe enough, and she’d never heard or seen anything try and attack the gates, but it was boring. The twins had their tech hunting, and Lekko seemed to be interested in the work the Machinists were doing. Rei, on the other hand, was beginning to feel the stirrings of restlessness that had driven her to vengeance in the first place, and that restlessness was enough to scare her.

Haga with the fragment axe, his head hacked from his shoulders. The slaver with the club, her brains dashed into the sand surrounded by fragments of skull. The guard with her own nodachi , blood spurting from a severed artery in her throat. _Like cutting through meat,_ Rei had thought at the time. She looked down at her hands, and for half a second, they were smeared with blood.

_What’s the matter, little Shek girl? Didn’t our blood taste as sweet as you’d hoped?_

“You’re not real,” Rei said. “You’re just my imagination.”

_Imagination or not, you still shake when I speak to you._ Haga’s head was shrunken and rotting today, and maggots had eaten both his eyeballs. Rei tried to visualise dragging him to a door in her mind and shutting him away, but he just laughed at her with his corpse-grin. The scene blurred, and for a moment he was very much alive, standing in front of her with his hands gripping her wrists like shackles. Rei froze. The grin stretched wider and wider, then suddenly she was alone and shivering on the ramp.

“Rei? Are you OK?”

“I’m fine!” Her voice was far more high-pitched and breathless than she’d intended it to be. She had to take a few deep breaths to steady herself. “It’s OK, I’m fine, don’t worry.”

“Right,” Jared said. He obviously didn’t believe her, and Rei knew why; he’d seen the last time this had happened, back in the crowded bar just after they’d arrived at World’s End. “Want me to give you some space?”

“No!” The slave master would come back if Jared left, she was sure of it. “Don’t leave.”

He scanned her face for a moment. “OK.”

She budged up so she wasn’t sitting in the middle of the ramp, and he sat down next to her. Scrap, who’d thoroughly relieved himself at this point, came trotting up. Rei pulled him onto her lap and shivered into his fur. The breeze was picking up, almost a proper wind now.

“You should probably come indoors,” Jared said, but Rei shook her head; indoors felt too claustrophobic, too restrictive, too reminiscent of Haga’s noble house. “At the very least, let me find you a coat.”

“I don’t need one.”

Did Haga ever appear to either of the twins? Rei longed to ask Jared, but fear caught at her tongue. Maybe he’d think she was nuts, and maybe he would be right. Haga aside, the warm wetness of other people’s blood on her hands was still fresh in her memory. She curled her fingers of her left hand into the side of her other wrist, digging the nails in just below the bone plate, trying to distract herself with the pain.

“Don’t do that.” Jared’s hand tugged hers away, and she jumped. Scrap lifted his head and let out a warning growl, and he quickly let go of her. “Shit. Sorry. Didn’t think.”

“No, it’s OK.” Her muscles had jerked slightly, but her body hadn’t otherwise reacted to his touch. She stroked the ruff at the back of Scrap’s neck. “It’s OK, Scrap. He’s not gonna hurt me.”

Scrap settled down into her lap again, though he continued to watch Jared with a slightly baleful expression. Rei continued to stroke him, soothing herself as much as him. “Thanks for checking on me,” she mumbled.

“It’s OK. You just looked a bit upset when you left. Is there anything you want to talk about?”

Where would she even start? “No. I just needed a bit of air.”

“Well, you’ve certainly got plenty of that out here.”

“Yeah.” She wished there was something more she could say, but her vocal cords didn’t seem to want to work. Jared seemed to sense this, because he sat back against the ramp and feigned interest in the sky. Rei looked up too, and watched the clouds move slowly against a grey backdrop.

“Think it’s going to rain?” Jared said.

“I don’t know. Does it rain much in the mountains?”

“Not as much as you’d think. Sometimes it gets misty, when the clouds are low.”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the rain.”

“I don’t think you’re missing much.”

“Mm.” She shifted position, straightening her cramped legs. Scrap made a grumbling sound as he was forced out of his spot. He was growing fast. Soon he’d reach his adult size, and he’d be too heavy to lie comfortably on her lap. “Oh… Jared? Can I ask you a question?”

“Ask away.”

“It’s about Spade.”

Jared’s tone immediately became guarded. “You should probably ask her.”

“I mean, I guess it’s about you too. But… after everything that happened with Lord Haga” — Jared twitched — “is he still… still…”

“Yeah,” Jared said, “he is.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t been expecting his voice to be as hostile as that. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s not you I’m mad at, Rei. It’s the bastard who stole everything from us, hurt us, made us strangers to each other. My sister? She’s like a completely different person now. We both are. And he’s like a fucking_ shadow_ that won’t go away.” He stopped. “Ignore me. This isn’t a thing you need to be dragged into.”

“It’s OK.”

“You have enough to deal with as it is. I know you’ve got your own shadows.”

Rei hesitated, then reached out and put her hand on Jared’s arm. “I think we have the same shadows.”

He looked down at her hand in mild surprise, then back at her. “About what Spade said the other day. When we didn’t realise you were downstairs.”

“Oh, that.” She tried to move her hand away, but her muscles didn’t seem to want to obey her. “It’s OK.”

“She’s probably right. I’ve been overstepping. For what it’s worth, I uh, I do like you. But given the circumstances…”

Rei ducked her head. Her cheeks felt hot. “Yeah. Dunno. Maybe you’re right. Guess we should focus on sorting ourselves out.” Her lips moved some more, making sounds, but nothing she said seemed to form a coherent string of words.

Jared, meanwhile, was staring at her like she’d suddenly started speaking cannibal-language. “You OK?”

Rei pulled her hand back. She didn’t need a mirror to know that her face was bright red. “Yeah, um… fine… uh…”

“Sorry for making this awkward. I realise this may have been a bad time to have that conversation.”

In spite of everything, Rei laughed. “Maybe just a bit.”

She stole a covert glance at Jared when he wasn’t looking. She’d be lying if she said his interest wasn’t reciprocated, but she’d had other things on her mind since leaving the stone camp. If Kat had been here, she’d probably have teased them both and tried to play matchmaker. Thinking of Kat sent a pang of sadness through Rei’s guts, and she found herself wishing their paths would cross again.

“We should probably go inside,” Jared said.

“Oh… yeah.” Her flushed face had served as a momentary distraction from the cold. Now the wind was beginning to bite, and the clouds were moving in and making the thick grey blanket thicker. “Yeah, we probably should.”

They stood up as one, Scrap close to Rei’s heels. The University didn’t seem so much like a prison now, and Rei was beginning to wonder how she could have ever found the place claustrophobic. She almost welcomed Finch’s annoyed voice from upstairs as they went back to where Spade was sitting.

“You guys OK?” Spade said, scrutinising the pair of them.

“Fine.” Jared seemed to wilt a little under his sister’s gaze. He grinned disarmingly. Spade looked between him and Rei, and her lips tugged into what was almost, but not quite, a knowing smirk.

“You guys want to get some lunch?” she said. With a jolt, Rei realised that she hadn’t eaten yet, and the afternoon was wearing on. “Or early dinner, or whatever. Coz I don’t know about you, but after all those months of being hungry, I don’t really like missing meals.”

“Back to the bar then?” Jared said.

_“Not_ the one we were in earlier.” Rei remembered the barkeep’s quizzical expression as the three of them had scrambled out from under the table. “Let’s go for the one by the gates, that one sells better food than the others.” It was also slightly cheaper, though Rei didn’t mention it; their money was fast running out and the twins didn’t seem to know the first thing about sticking to a budget. “We’re going to have to find some work, if we’re staying here.”

“You’re staying here?” Spade said in surprise.

“I don’t know.” Rei glanced quickly at Jared, then looked away again. Spade didn’t seem to notice, but Haga did, and his laugh rang hollowly in Rei’s mind.

_He can’t have you,_ you know. _You’re mine._

Very slowly and deliberately, Rei closed that door in her mind. Haga’s laugh continued to seep through the cracks, but at least she was no longer staring at his putrefying flesh. Realising the twins were looking at her with concern, she forced a smile.

“Let’s eat,” she said.


	7. Flotsam

They’d only just set off for Flotsam, and Kat was already regretting her decision.

The first few minutes of the journey hadn’t been so bad. With some fresh clothes and a proper meal inside her belly, Kat was beginning to feel more human again. The dizziness was still there, but the fire seemed to come in waves, and there were moments when she felt almost normal, and capable of walking in a straight line without swerving off the path.

Ahead of them, however, the clear day blurred and fuzzed into a foggy land ankle-deep in water. These were the Floodlands Moll had warned Kat about. As they moved into the mist, the moisture in the air soaked Kat through and racked her body with shivers. Water quenched fire, but not this one, and the cold seemed to make the dizziness worse. Kat stumbled, and Moll caught hold of her arm before she could fall into the stagnant water.

“Kid, I think you need to go back.”

“It’s fine,” Kat said through chattering teeth. “I can do it. Promise.”

The humidity was making breathing difficult. Moll had pulled up the top of her ninja rags so they were covering her mouth and nose, but Kat had no such luxury, and her lungs were starting to feel the strain. In fact, everything was starting to feel the strain. The cold wetness sapped what strength she had, and her damp trousers hugged and dragged at her legs every time she took a step. The bandage on her hand was soaked through, and rivulets of water ran down her thighs and aggravated the torn skin on her knees. The moisture had gotten under the gauze on her cheek, too, and was beginning to wash away the sticky ointment. Already the gauze was peeling.

“Keep an eye peeled for old machines,” Moll said.

“What do they look like?” Kat mumbled, sidestepping a deep puddle.

“Iron spiders mostly. A crazed, broken Skeleton if we’re unlucky. We’ll try and avoid fights if we can help it, given your current state. Just keep out of their way and they might not notice us.”

The Floodlands felt like being in the swamps all over again, except there were no blood spiders. Kat hoped they wouldn’t have to swim at any point. In some places they were almost wading through trenches of murky water, and the whole experience was thoroughly miserable. The water itself was covered in a slick of oil; as Kat dragged her feet out of yet another puddle she noticed its sheen against her legs. Her toenails were almost invisible under the black oil, and she could feel it seeping underneath them with every step she took.

The oil wasn’t the only thing that was thick, either. Afraid she might lose Moll in the fog, Kat clung to the back of her shirt. They were deeper into the Floodlands now, and visibility was only getting poorer.

“If you can’t walk any further, let me know,” Moll said.

Shame prickled at Kat’s clammy skin. She knew as well as anyone that ill and injured travellers were liabilities, but she’d insisted she could do it. Now she’d probably put this woman in danger, and out of nothing more than a desperation to not be alone. Her grip shook a little on Moll’s rags.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

Moll came to a sudden stop and held up a hand. “Shh!”

Kat peered into the mists, her heart racing. For a moment there was nothing but the damp mist and a distant buzzing that might have been in her own ears. Then she saw it; a dark shape on the path ahead, skittering through the fog towards them. The cloud above their head parted for a second, and a stray beam of sunlight gleamed off the side of a large metallic spider. Kat stumbled back, but there was no time to run. The spider had seen them both, and in the blink of an eye it had closed the gap between them, whirring, rusted blades heading straight for Moll’s legs.

Kat squeaked. The path here had narrowed, with dark water on their left and a sheer rock face on their right. They’d already been walking in single file. Moll couldn’t back up in a hurry, and there was little room for her to maneuver her ninja blades, which were still strapped to her back. But just as the spider launched its attack, Moll used her foot to push off the side of the cliff, and jumped onto its back with full force. “Don’t just stand there!” she shouted at Kat. “Move back!”

Hesitant to turn her back on Moll and the spider, Kat nonetheless took a few paces backwards. The spider rotated, trying to throw Moll off, but Moll had braced herself properly, and did not fall. Sticking one hand out and crouching to keep her balance, she slammed her right heel into the joint of one of its legs. The spider did not collapse, but it skittered drunkenly. Moll quickly drew her ninja blades and punctured straight through the cooling unit at the top of its head. As the spider, hissing steam, tried to move towards Kat, Moll stabbed it again. This time it went down, and she hopped off its back, re-sheathing her swords as she did so. The entire fight had lasted less than twenty seconds.

“How did you… how did…” Kat’s tongue felt fuzzy. She stared blankly at the fallen spider as Moll nudged it with her toe to check it really was dead.

“These things aren’t much of a threat. Provided you know how to deal with them.” Moll gently took Kat by the arm. “I think you’ll be better off if you’re being carried.”

“But… what about you?”

“Kid, I once had to fight a swarm of cannibals with Yayoi unconscious on my shoulder. And you’re significantly smaller than she is.”

Kat was not entirely unused to being carried like a sack of greenfruit, but she felt the last shreds of her dignity slipping away nonetheless. Her face bumped against Moll’s back, causing a sudden blaze of pain, and she gritted her teeth to stop herself from screaming. The impact was all the encouragement the gauze needed, and it came completely loose. Kat watched as it drifted down and disappeared into the floodwater.

“Keep an eye out back there, yeah?” Moll called.

There wasn’t much to be seen except the mist. The occasional spiking ray of sunlight found its way through the cloud, reflecting off the water in rainbow patterns. Kat’s eyes followed one of the rays upwards, and alighted on a few birds, flying in the skies above the dismal mist.

“I didn’t think there’d be birds,” she said.

“Those aren’t birds,” Moll replied, not slowing her pace.

“What are they?”

“Old machines. Don’t worry, we’re pretty sure they’re harmless. But they’ve been buzzing around these parts for thousands of years… the ancients must have put them here.” As she spoke, Kat realised the hovering bird-like machines must have been the source of the low buzzing sound she’d heard earlier. She strained her ears to hear it again, but her mind felt as foggy as their surroundings, and she could make out nothing.

After about an hour, or maybe longer – time seemed to blur into the mist – the air grew less damp, and the heat of the sunlight grew stronger. Moll set Kat down and sank onto a rock, rubbing at the soles of her feet. Kat looked around and noticed the fog that had been so thick was now a fine haze, and the oily swamp had given way to drier, firmer land. Trees dotted the landscape ahead of them, growing closer together the more Kat peered into the distance. They almost seemed to move, shrinking backwards yet remaining firmly rooted. Kat wasn’t sure if it was an optical illusion caused by the mist or her own fevered mind playing tricks on her. She didn’t mention it to Moll.

“Welcome to the Hidden Forest,” Moll said.

Kat stared doubtfully at the trees. They stood tall like the mist ghouls she’d heard stories about, their branches like long, jagged fingers just waiting to snatch at the unwary traveller. It looked even less appealing than the Floodlands had been, and Kat hadn’t forgotten Moll had mentioned cannibals.

“It’s not misty all the way through,” Moll said. “Just here at the edge.” She passed Kat a waterskin that had been attached to her belt. “Get some more fluids in you.”

Kat drank from the waterskin, keeping both eyes firmly on the misty trees as if something was about to lurch out at them. Moll saw her unease and chuckled. “The cannibals aren’t too fond of the mists. They prefer to camp up on the hills where they can see everything for miles around. We’re safe enough here, unless another spider comes our way.”

“You make this trip a lot, right?” Kat handed the skin back to Moll, who took a swig.

“Not as often as I used to. Sometimes I’ve acted as a guide for refugees fleeing the Holy Nation. So don’t beat yourself up about your current physical state. When you have a dozen lives you’re responsible for, on the other hand…”

Kat nodded, thinking of the slaves Rei had taken to World’s End. The movement made her head hurt.

“Do you think you can walk?” Moll said. “If we get swarmed I’d prefer to dual wield.”

The fire in Kat’s muscles still flared from time to time, but the rest had helped. “I can try.”

“Good. Stay close.”

Kat had no intention of doing anything else. They left the Floodlands behind them and continued onwards into the forest. Moll was right; the mist quickly swirled away as they walked, and soon the sun was out in full force. Kat could feel the heat tingling her bare scalp, and rubbed absently at the top of her head.

The ground was dry and crunchy and covered in twigs. Moll was evidently practised at moving barefoot, but the soles of Kat’s feet were soon bleeding again. Walking _hurt._ She did her best to keep on the grassier patches away from any dead bits of tree, but the grass was filled with hidden stones and thorny brambles. In the end she just followed where Moll was walking. At least she could see that.

After a time the path they were on became more clearly marked, snaking along the feet of hills, mainly keeping to the low ground. Kat found herself nervously looking around, trying to spot anyone who might be watching them from above. Moll, too, was keeping an eye out. At one point she grabbed Kat’s arm and dragged her off the path, taking a sharp turn around the side of a hill. Kat didn’t need to ask to know that the other woman had seen something.

“Is there much else to worry about?” she whispered. “Aside from the cannibals?”

“Bonedogs are a problem everywhere you go, but since they tend to sleep during the day, we shouldn’t have to worry too much. There are wild goats in these parts, too, but they don’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”

Kat had seen wild goats before. When she and Longstoat had passed through the ruined Hub on their way northwards, he’d warned her not to mess with them. “They might look small and weak,” he’d said, “but they’ll fight to the death if you attack them. Scrappy little things, they are.”

They didn’t see any bonedogs, or any goats for that matter. Kat did hear animalistic screams in the far distance, and could only cross her fingers and pray that whatever was making them wasn’t going to charge their way.

“Bring Greenlanders to the northern lands and they seem to go mad,” Moll said when Kat brought it up. “You got the cannibals, those bandits that seem to communicate in shrieks… I don’t know how the nomads manage up here.”

“The north actually sends people mad?” Kat squeaked.

“Well, Flotsam’s in the heart of the Hidden Forest, so let’s hope not. We haven’t started eating each other yet, at least.”

“Is… is it safe?”

“Flotsam? One of the safest places in the north. Second only to World’s End, and that’s because World’s End is in the mountains. Sure we got our little cannibal problem, but they’re good for target practice.”

“Have you ever had anyone eaten?”

“Not on my watch.”

Kat relaxed a little. Moll turned, shading her eyes, and peered up at the nearest ridge. “We may be better getting on the high ground. It’s a lot harder for things to charge us if we’re uphill of them.”

The slopes were steep and a nightmare to traverse, but Moll had a point; up on the hills, the trees were sparser, and there was no chance of anything getting the jump on them. As they crested the hill they’d been climbing, Moll pointed north and said, “Flotsam is over there. Just down in that dip.”

Kat looked and saw a faint plume of smoke, tunnelling upwards into the air. She wouldn’t have seen it if Moll hadn’t pointed out; her vision was getting blurry, and it wasn’t just the brightness of the sun. The exertion of getting up the hill had caused her head to spin, and everything was beginning to feel incredibly achey. Her clothes were still sodden, her feet cut and bleeding from all the times she’d misstepped.

“Not too far now,” said Moll. “Less than an hour to go.”

Kat burned and shivered and said nothing.

Their progress was a little slower than it had been, hampered by Kat’s misery. Moll, too, seemed to be flagging, and Kat remembered she’d already made this journey once today. Up on the ridges, however, walking was easier, as the ground was flatter. Moll told Kat to keep an eye out to the east, while she looked to the west. Kat didn’t notice any cannibals, but she did see the great mountain range in the distance, and was thankful that she had not been expected to climb that.

“That’s Okran’s Arm,” Moll said as if reading Kat’s thoughts. “World’s End is up there.”

“Do they belong to the Holy Nation? The mountains, I mean?”

“Ehhh. Sort of. There’s not really any reason for them to claim the mountains. Ain’t really much Holy Nation presence in those parts, not even to the east of the Arm. Just a few farms. Still might get patrols if you’re unlucky.”

“But we’re fine here, right?”

“Fine here. Except for the cannibals. The Holy Nation doesn’t like these lands… wild and godless that they are.”

A few drops of rain landed on the top of Kat’s head. She looked up. Dark clouds were moving across the sky, and the northern horizon was black and ominous.

“Looks like it’s gonna rain,” Moll said. “At least it doesn’t rain acid here. Well… technically it does, if the clouds roll in off the coast, but the worst of it falls in the Cannibal Plains to the north. By the time it reaches us it’s a lot less dangerous.”

Kat brushed the raindrops off her scalp. They felt tingly against the sensitive skin, but the rest of her was burning anyway. Moll didn’t seem to have noticed. “That being said, being caught in a downpour is no fun either way. Let’s pick up the pace and see if we can get to Flotsam before the clouds tip.”

The clouds tipped well before they reached the village. Kat tried to use the trees for shelter, but the rain dripped straight through the branches. She hadn’t experienced much in the way of rain for a long time, but she found it unpleasant rather than refreshing. The air was both fresh and smouldering at the same time, and whilst the acid was dilute by this point, it still stung on her injuries. She wished she’d retrieved the gauze when it had fallen off in the Floodlands.

“Nearly there,” Moll said soothingly, as Kat clutched her face with her good hand and stuck her injured one into her armpit to keep it away from the rain.

After everything that had happened, Flotsam was like an oasis. Kat’s knees sagged in relief, and Moll had to grab her by the shoulder and pull her up. The guards on the gates watched them approach, their eyes alight with interest at the newcomer. With a jolt, Kat realised that they were all women. It was the exact opposite of the situation in Blister Hill.

“Hi, Moll,” one of the guards said. “Shitty weather, right? Who’s this?”

“Someone who needs rest and some proper medical attention.” The grip on Kat’s shoulder tightened. Kat hadn’t even realised she’d stumbled. “What’s the situation with the refuges?”

“We still have some space.” The woman pointed at a cluster of buildings. “I think there’s a spare bed in one of them but you’ll have to check.”

“Great. Thanks, Daria.”

Moll moved her grip to Kat’s elbow. Now that Kat had stopped moving, she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to start again. The fire was too hot, too cold, too _intense._ Her stomach churned. She hadn’t thought the first thing she’d do in Flotsam would be to throw up, but it was beginning to look that way…

A young woman with a blonde ponytail came running out of a nearby building. “Moll! Hey, Moll! I gave Rei the letter, she didn’t send one back, I wasn’t sure if she was supposed to or not, but I got everything you sent me for this time, except one of the books, my bag broke and it fell in a puddle, so I’m sorry about that, but Sky says she’s gonna fix my bag, and I’m ready to go out again whenever you want, ooh and I found a really pretty shell from a land cockle, do you want to see it? It’s…”

“Not right now, Pia,” Moll interrupted. “If you want to do something useful, see if there are any spare beds in the refuges.”

“Oh, yes! There’s one in mine. She can use it. Well, she’s probably gonna have to use it, given she’s looking really unwell. Is she gonna be sick? I dunno how to deal with sick…”

“Pia.”

“They did that to her face, right? I hate the paladins. I hate them.”

_“Pia.”_

__“Yeah?”

“Move out of the way.”

Moll propelled Kat towards one of the storm-houses and led her inside. It was empty, but there were clear signs of habitation inside. Blankets lay strewn across the room, the table was piled high with rocks and feathers and shells, and things had been knocked over and forgotten about. In fact, the entire place looked like the handiwork of a particularly vengeful spirit, possibly the vengeful spirit of a magpie.

“Now I see why you have this place to yourself,” Moll said.

“Oh, but I’d love a roommate, really! And it’s not too messy, I mean, it’s just a bit disorganised really, nothing a bit of tidying won’t fix.” Pia kicked a blanket under the bed when Moll wasn’t watching. “Do you want me to make up the other bed?”

“If you would.”

Pia moved fast. She almost seemed to bounce on the balls of her feet, and the floorboards squeaked as she hurried back and forth, collecting blankets and piling up pillows. When Kat’s legs failed her, Moll picked her up and gently laid her in the bed. The cool sheets soothed her otherwise burning skin.

“Pia, fetch some water.”

Five seconds later there came a crash loud enough to shake the walls, and a muffled “Ow!” from Pia. Moll groaned under her breath and pulled up a stool next to Kat’s bed.

“You can’t lie here in wet things. They’ll have to come off.”

After having been forcibly stripped back in Rebirth, Kat shrank away from Moll’s touch. She wouldn’t undress until Moll had turned her back, and even then taking her clothes off again was a slow and laborious process. Halfway through she just wanted to lie down and sleep, and it took every effort to drag her tired muscles through the fabric. She scrunched the blanket under her neck to preserve her modesty and slumped back against the mattress, her eyes rolling involuntarily.

“Bring the water here, Pia. Let’s get her cleaned up a bit. If you can dampen that cloth and put it on her forehead…”

“Oh, but… what if I do it wrong?”

“I’m asking you to keep her skin cool, not perform surgery. How would you do it wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

It felt weird, lying there while they discussed her. Kat tried to open her eyes to signal that she was still awake, but they were gummed shut. Nothing seemed to work as it should, not even her voice. She only vaguely felt a hand tilting her chin as something cool and wet was dabbed against the brand.

“I want you to look after her, all right, Pia? This is Rei’s friend.”

_“Rei’s_ friend?”

“And she’s about as stubborn as a goat, so don’t let her do anything that’ll delay her recovery.”

_Hey,_ Kat tried to say, but her lips were glued with whatever it was that was keeping her eyes closed.

“I’ll need to go back to World’s End and tell her.”

“Not today, Pia.”

“But tomorrow’s Prayer Day, and I don’t want to miss the service.”

_Prayer Day… _Had it really been less than a week since Kat’s arrest? She tried to think it through, but her foggy brain didn’t want to oblige, and even the mental effort was exhausting.

“Then go the day after. I’m sure it can wait a day or two.”

_No it can’t._

__“And Pia?”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe arrange your collections so you don’t have dirty stuff from outside where you eat, yeah?”

“There’s nowhere else to put them.”

“I’m sure you can figure something out. Now, I need to go and speak to Yayoi and do a million and one other things. Stay with Kat, please.”

“Yes, Moll.”

The door closed. Kat heard the bedsprings creak as Pia sat on her bed. For a while there was silence, and Kat found herself dozing off, in a fitful sleep interspersed with fire. From time to time she thought she felt a hand touching her good one, and an excitable voice trying to be soothing, but they were just moments in darkness, and she wasn’t sure if they were real or not.

When she came back to her senses, she had no idea what time it was. There was daylight, and Pia was sitting cross-legged on her bed, but it could have been three hours or three days. Kat sat up, all too aware of the pain still in her joints, and looked over at the other girl.

“Is it still evening?”

“Morning. There’s a service soon, do you want to come?”

“I don’t know if I’m even able to get out of bed.” Kat hadn’t tried, but the prospect felt daunting.

Pia came over to her and sat on the stool.

“It looks real painful, what they did. Does it hurt? There’s loads of blisters and stuff, I guess it must hurt. Moll says you escaped on your own. Was it difficult? You found the safehouse though, you were lucky to find it, Moll said so. Do you miss your hair? I bet it’ll be really pretty when it grows out, I love Scorchlander hair, it’s all silvery and cool. My hair’s really boring… How did you meet Rei? She’s nice, there’s a bunch of people with her in World’s End, she sometimes hangs out with this guy and his sister. He’s nice too, I knew him before he got enslaved because the United Cities are shitbags, anyway he’s kind of cute and I bet she thinks so too. Rei I mean, not his sister, that would be just creepy. Your name’s Kat, right? I like that name. Is it short for anything? Ooh, let me guess. Is it short for Katana? That would be awesome, wouldn’t it, being named after a sword.”

Kat’s brain had stopped processing after the first few sentences. “It’s just Kat.”

“Oh, that’s a shame. Well, I don’t mean it’s a shame, it’s a really nice name.”

“Thanks.”

“Would you like to see my rocks? I found a few when I was on my way back from World’s End. And some feathers. And some shells. I need someone’s opinion on which are the prettiest. Can you help?”

“I… I guess.”

Pia returned with a box full of bits and pieces. She dumped it over Kat’s legs before Kat had a chance to protest. “Sometimes there are some really pretty birds that fly over and drop feathers. Look, this one’s blue and green with a little black bit on the end. It’s pretty, isn’t it? Do you think so?”

“How old are you, Pia?” Kat said, wondering if the girl was just tall for her age

.“Sixteen.” Pia didn’t look up, still happily perusing her collection.

_She could as easily be twelve._ “I’m seventeen. Nearly eighteen… I think.”

Pia had arranged everything into three piles of rocks, shells and feathers respectively. “Can you choose the seven prettiest things from each of these?”

“Seven? Why seven?”

“It has to be seven.”

“Right. OK.” Seeing Pia’s intense expression, Kat took her time choosing. When she was done, Pia beamed and swept everything else into the box. The selected items disappeared into Pia’s pockets. “Thank you!”

“Um… no problem.”

“Do you want to come to the service?” Pia pressed.

“I can see if I’m well enough. Could you step out of the room for a sec?”

Once Pia was out of sight, Kat tried to stand up. Though her legs felt wobbly and she had to hold the wall, it felt easier than it had done the previous day. She reached for the clothes that had been drying and pulled them on, then grabbed a blanket from the bed and went to meet Pia outside. “I think I’m well enough. Go on, take me with you.”

The service was held in a building next to the gate. The place was evidently used for other things when it was not Prayer Day; the floor was scraped from chairs and tables being pushed around and Kat could see an oven just behind one of the screens that divided the room into sections. Stools had been set up at the front, although the majority of people who were in the building were standing. Pia glowered at a woman who had her feet up on one of the stools until she moved.

“I’ve never been to a service before,” Kat confessed in a whisper.

“Oh, don’t worry about it! Just stand when everyone stands and kneel when everyone kneels… or not, just sit, it’ll be fine. Daria won’t care.”

Kat recognised Daria as the woman who had been on the gate yesterday. She’d donned a dark robe over her more usual clothing, and was standing on a stool to lend height to her slight figure. There was a book in her hands that had been dog-eared at certain sections to allow her to turn to the right page more easily. Kat’s grandmother would never have allowed Kat to treat books like that, and she suspected the paladins would have had something to say about it, too.

That being said, the paladins would probably have had something to say about the whole set-up. The congregation wasn’t entirely all-female, but it was close, and Kat only saw a few men. When Daria spoke, it was with an authority the Holy Nation would never have given a woman, and she seemed to place rather a lot of emphasis on the duality of Okran and Narko as being a balancing act. From what Kat had seen of Rebirth, she knew this was not Holy Nation doctrine, and she wondered if Daria had left because of her heretical views.

“There’s a more traditional service too,” Pia said in Kat’s ear, “but I like this one better. It’s got less stuff about how we’re all evil.”

The sermon gave way to hymns, none of which Kat knew, but she joined in with gusto on the choruses. It had been a while since she’d heard her singing voice, and while it was still a little creaky from illness, it was strangely uplifting. Song filled the room, reverberating off the metal walls, and for the first time, Kat felt almost at peace.

After the service, the two girls sat outside on the grass and enjoyed the sunshine. Kat kept the blanket wrapped around herself, and began to feel pleasantly toasty. She was no longer shivering quite so much, which felt like a good sign.

“I like church,” Pia said. “I like it much better now that I’m here and not in Blister Hill.”

“You came from Blister Hill?”

“Yeah. I don’t really remember it all that well, I was only nine when we left, I just remember the church services were really long and boring and I had to stand at the back coz I was a girl. And the priest was creepy. I didn’t like him, and Naevia said he was…” She trailed off, chewing her lip.

“Naevia? Who’s Naevia?”

“My sister,” Pia said in a rush. “Anyway, he had this really horrible beard, and his hands were all clammy, and… ooh! Hi, Reva! I didn’t see you at the service!”

“That’s coz I didn’t _go,”_ snapped the woman that had just walked past. She stopped, folding her arms. “Just because some of you still believe in that nonsense, doesn’t mean everybody does.”

“It’s not nonsense,” Pia said, sounding hurt. “Okran’s my friend.”

“Oh, yeah? Guess he’s the only one you’ve got, since no-one else likes you.”

Pia jumped to her feet. A few rocks fell out of her pocket as she did so. Reva’s lip curled as she looked down at them. “Maybe it’s time for you to face facts. You can sit in your bubble all you like, with your precious imaginary friend and your stupid little rocks, or you can grow up and live in the _real_ world.”

Kat got up, albeit with more difficulty than Pia had done. The blanket kept tangling around her legs, and she was forced to discard it. “That’s cruel. Why is what Pia believes and does any of your business anyway? She’s not hurting you.”

“And you’re defending that religion of hers after their followers burnt their symbol into your face?” Reva’s withering gaze had fallen on the fresh gauze on Kat’s cheek. “I know what that’s covering. I’m not stupid.”

The accusation stung as much as the brand. “I’m not defending it. I’m defending Pia.”

“She shouldn’t need anyone to defend her. She’s almost an adult. She should be acting like one.” Reva turned and stalked off, the tails of her leather coat trailing behind her. Kat glared at her retreating figure then turned back to Pia, who had gone very quiet.

“Want some help picking those up?”

“Nah,” Pia said in a small voice. “I’m good.” She retrieved the last of the rocks that had fallen from her pockets and stuffed them back inside.

Kat wasn’t sure what to say. “She seems mean.”

“Yeah, she is a bit. I tried to be friends with her but she really doesn’t like me.”

“People like that, they aren’t worth it.”

“Maybe she’s right. No-one _does_ want to be my friend.”

Kat’s heart twinged. “Oh, Pia. I’m sure they do.”

“Not really. Even Moll thinks I’m annoying. Just a dumb kid.”

“You’re not dumb.”

Pia shrugged. “I am, but I’m good at running. Moll said you wanted me to take a message.”

“Oh. Yeah. If you would. Do you know where I can find a pen and paper?”

“Moll might have some.”

When the pen and paper had been procured, they made their way back to the refuge. Kat sat at the table, surrounded by all the random things Pia had collected, and stared at the blank sheet in front of her. With everything that had happened, the task of pinning it down to a few brief sentences was gargantuan. She brushed a slightly-slimy shell off the paper and began to write, occasionally pausing to dip the nib of her pen in the ink. It was difficult to write with her left hand, and the ink kept smearing, but the result was at least semi-legible, and most importantly, it was personal. Kat sat back and watched the ink dry, proud of her efforts if not her penmanship.

“You said it was urgent, right?” Pia said tentatively.

“Kind of, yeah. She could be in danger.”

“Oh, shit. I didn’t realise she could be in danger. Well, I’ll take it today, if that’s the case. Just…”

Pia cleared a little space on the table and emptied her pockets. Kat watched in fascination, wondering how the feathers were even still in one piece at this point. “Can you look after these for me, please? Don’t let anything happen to them. Definitely don’t let Reva do anything to them. Would you? Please?”

Guarding Pia’s random collections was not a thing Kat had been expecting to do that evening, but she was so thankful Pia was making the trip to World’s End she didn’t even question it. “Of course I will.”

“Thanks! See you later!” And with that Pia was gone, a slight draught the only sign that she had ever been there.

Kat had done everything she could. Now Rei’s fate was in Pia’s hands. She scratched at the table with a fingernail, watching the wood splinter, and prayed the other girl was going to get there in time to save her friend.


	8. Books

Haga was watching her again.

Rei was used to his unwelcome presence by now, but today it bothered her even more than it usually did. She took a deep breath, staring at the metal tub by her feet, and nudged it with the toe of her boot. The water inside barely rippled as the steam rose off it. Behind her reflection, the slave master was leering. Rei turned her face away and stared at the steamed-up privacy screen until she’d gotten her breathing more under control.

It hadn’t been her idea to visit the bath-house, or what passed for a bath-house in World’s End; it had been Sabina’s. Rei knew Sabina had a point. The last time she’d washed had been weeks ago in Bark, stepping fully-clothed into the ocean, and whilst she hadn’t heard the Machinists complain about the smell, Sabina had pressed money into Rei’s hand and tactfully suggested she and the others might like to avail themselves of the opportunity to get clean.

“You look like you could use a good long soak,” she’d said, “and to get that slave-camp dust off you.”

The steam was filling the room, but Haga was still there. Rei squatted to unlace her boots and left them by the screen. The floor was still wet from previous patrons, but at least it was clean under her bare feet. Sabina had advised Rei not to go any time a group of Tech Hunters had just returned. “They leave the place muddier than the Swamps,” she’d said with a wry chuckle.

Most of the Tech Hunters were still out of town, and it had been a few days since the last group had come back from their expedition with the battered, ancient books that had annoyed Finch so much. The bath-house was quiet, apart from the steady hum of a boiler tank and the sound of someone cleaning themselves in the next bath over. Still the place felt oppressive, and Rei couldn’t bring herself to step into the tub.

_Well? _Haga said expectantly. _Are you just going to stand there?_

Rei tugged at the front of her filthy shirt and said nothing.

_You know, I’d turn my back if I could. But I don’t have a back. I’m just a head, remember? You made me that way._

“You liar,” Rei mumbled. “You never turned your back in the noble house.”

She stuck her finger in the water. It was hot. She made a fist and plunged her entire hand in as if she was punching the surface. The water sploshed around her wrist, scalding away at her skin. She kept it there for a moment or two, trying to focus on the pain rather than the stirring memories, then pulled it out and stared at her reddened hand.

_I liked seeing you bathe. All skin and bones, just like the others, but you made up for it, with your pretty face. Prettier than that offering you brought me. Not that I care what the grog looks like, as long as it tastes good._

“Fuck off,” Rei told him, wishing she’d brought Scrap with her.

_But I can’t. I’m dead. I’m just your own thoughts, and you can’t get away from those._

Rei took a deep breath and yanked her shirt off her head. The fabric caught on the horns along her back and on her arms, and as it fell in a crumpled heap on the sodden floor, she knew she’d ripped it. Angrily she pulled off the rest of her clothes, throwing them on top of the discarded shirt, and climbed into the bathtub.

The water burned. Rei gasped as it sloshed over her. For the briefest of seconds the damp wooden floor was covered with a patterned rug, and the steam was filled with lavender. Rei held her breath and dunked her head under the water, keeping it there until her lungs burst and she was forced to surface. She laid her head against the side of the tub and swore loudly at the mist. She no longer cared what the bather on the other side of the screen thought of her.

There was a sliver of soap left in the dish attached to the tub, but Rei’s hands kept turning into Haga’s, and eventually she abandoned any attempts to wash. The water was pretty dirty, anyway. Soap or no soap, she was cleaner than she’d been in a long time.

More water sloshed onto the floor as she got out of the bath. Refusing to look down, she fumbled for a towel and wrapped it around herself. Sabina had lent her a spare change of clothes so she didn’t have to wear her dirty ones, but getting dressed was another mountain. Rei caught glimpses of herself as she pulled on a too-baggy shirt, and hated what she saw. The ugly scar on her side she could deal with; the still-bony, weak, _pathetic_ flesh surrounding it was another matter entirely.

Even if Sabina’s clothes hadn’t been too big for her, they would still have felt strange. Rei wasn’t sure she’d taken her old ones off since Ava had first given them to her. She picked them up now, wrinkling her nose at the smell. She had to admit that Sabina had definitely had a point.

“Do you clean clothes as well?” she asked the bath-house owner, a woman with a scarf over her hair and a staring baby on her hip.

“That we do. It’ll cost you some extra, though.”

“Go for it.”

By the time Rei left the bath-house, it was getting late. She walked barefoot across the scrubby mountain grass, her boots in her hand, and shivered in the fresh breeze. It hadn’t rained yesterday, despite one or two rumbles in the far distance, and the sky was a lot less cloudy today, but there was little warmth in the evening sun. Rei wished she’d thought to ask Sabina for a coat.

The bath-house had shown Rei a different side to World’s End. It wasn’t just an impersonal town occupied only by scientists and adventurers. There were families living here, too; presumably the families of the shopkeeps, or those stationed at the University. Rei spotted one of the Machinists, strolling along with a woman and two children she didn’t recognise. She waved, and the family grinned and waved back. Of course people round here had families. Maybe she’d spent too much time without one, and had forgotten that other people took them for granted.

_Ava, Ruka, Kat. They were my family too, not just the people who raised me._

“Rei! Rei! _Rei!”_

Rei jumped and spun around, her hand automatically going to the club on her belt. Too late, she remembered she hadn’t brought any weapons to the bath-house with her. _Stupid. What if I’d run into trouble?_

“Rei,” Pia said, stumbling breathlessly to a halt, “oh, I’m glad you’re still here. I ran almost all the way from Flotsam, it was probably a bad idea coz of like, the cannibals and bein’ too tired, but I was told it was urgent, and so…”

Pia looked like she was about to collapse. She bent over, hands flat against her knees, breathing heavily. It was a few more minutes before she was able to pull a crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket. “It’s for you. I need a sit down. Think you might need one too.”

Rei stared down at the paper in her hand. “What _is_ this?”

“Just open it.”

It wasn’t from Moll; the note hadn’t even been sealed. It was slightly damp with sweat, and the paper had stuck to itself. Rei unfolded it with some difficulty and stared down at it. The handwriting was spidery and unfamiliar, but something about it punched her in the gut before she’d even had a chance to read it.

“I dunno what it says,” Pia said, “but she said it was urgent…”

It took a while for Rei to read the message; her mind was jumping all over the letters, and the handwriting certainly didn’t help. _Rei. HN got me, I’m OK now, but UC caught the others. Get out of World’s End. You’re in danger. Love Kat._ “Oh, shit.”

“Is it that bad?”

Rei’s hand shook as she re-folded the message. “I — I need to talk to Iyo.”

“Oh… OK.”

“Pia, don’t leave yet, OK? Stay here. I may need your help. Go get some food or something… I don’t know… just don’t go back yet.”

“OK…” Pia said, scanning Rei’s face. “D’you want me to come with you?”

“No! Stay here,” Rei said, more snappishly than she’d intended. She broke into a run, the grass prickling under her feet, leaving Pia staring after her. Her mind was filled with one word, and one word only. _Shit._

The Machinist Rei had seen about town earlier wasn’t the only one to have left work. Aside from Finch and Iyo, the laboratory was empty. Rei froze for a second at the top of the ramp; she hadn’t been reckoning on speaking to Finch as well.

“Don’t you know better than to go thundering through here disturbing delicate instruments?” Finch asked irritably.

Rei ignored him. Addressing Iyo, she burst out, “There’s some stuff I need to tell you.”

She thrust Kat’s message into Iyo’s hand. Iyo looked at her quizzically, then spread the paper out and read what Kat had written. Rei trembled, wishing she had some way of telling what he was thinking. Not being able to see his reaction made things that much worse.

“Iyo?” When his assistant did not reply, Finch crossed the room and read the note over Iyo’s shoulder. Rei hadn’t had much practice at reading Hiver emotions, but she knew a worried expression when she saw it. “I haven’t got time for cryptics. What’s the meaning of this note?”

“Uhhh.” Rei closed her eyes, feeling herself sway slightly. The full implication of what Kat had said was only just beginning to sink in. Kat was alive, but had somehow run into the hands of the Holy Nation. Ava and Ruka had not even made it that far, and were now probably being tortured. Tortured. And they knew exactly where Rei had been planning on going.

The United Cities would be coming for her. It was a scenario Rei had feared, but not one she had seriously expected would happen.

“Back in the desert,” she said falteringly, “some stuff happened. I didn’t exactly escape the slave camp with the others. I went back and freed them. And, uh…”

“Go on,” Iyo said.

“Well, when I was a slave, he uh… did things. To me and other slaves. I had to.”

“What are you talking about?” Finch said irritably, but Iyo seemed to have cottoned on.

“You killed somebody.”

“The noble in charge. And… one or two slavers. The United Cities would’ve been after me anyway, coz we pissed off another noble, but I think they’re really after me now.” She stared down at her feet. “Probably a bounty and everything.”

“And when were you going to tell _us_ this?” Finch said.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re _sorry?”_ Finch’s voice rose to a shriek. Rei winced. “For lying to us? For putting the town in danger?”

“Finch,” Iyo said.

“We let you stay here! _I_ let you stay here, in spite of the constant distractions! And you lied to us, made us guilty of harbouring a murderer and a terrorist…”

“Finch!”

Finch stopped. Iyo stepped between the two of them and handed the note back to Rei. “I think it’s best if you leave town,” he told her firmly.

“I’m sorry,” Rei said again.

“Just gather the rest of your group and go. For your sakes as well as ours.”

It wasn’t the way Rei had hoped to leave World’s End, and her heart sank like a stone. How was she going to tell the others?

“And we’re just going to let her go?” Finch said disbelievingly. “We should be detaining her. For when the bounty hunters come calling.”

“As you are so fond of reminding me,” Iyo pointed out, _“you’re _the one in charge here. It’s your call.”

Finch hesitated. Rei could tell he was still angry, but there were other emotions there she couldn’t quite get a handle on. Finally he let out a seething hiss and looked away. “Just get out,” he said quietly, “before I change my mind.”

Informing the former slaves of what had happened was one of the more difficult things Rei had had to do. Lekko, who seemed to have integrated well with the Machinists and Sabina especially, looked crushed. The twins responded with confused stares. Finally Lekko muttered, “Really thought we’d found somewhere to stay for good. Guess I was wrong about that.”

They found Pia in one of the bars, wolfing down a bowl of gohan . Rei approached her hesitantly. “Um, Pia? You know how Moll said it’d be OK for me to join up with Flotsam…”

“Yeah?” Pia said through a mouthful of rice.

“Do you think she’d object to three more?”

Pia looked over the people standing behind Rei. “What’s happened?”

Rei told her — quietly, in case the barkeep was listening. Pia’s eyes widened as Rei finished her explanation. “I didn’t realise you had a bounty,” she whispered. “That’s so cool.”

“It really isn’t,” Rei said. “Listen, do you think we could go back to Flotsam with you? To where… where Kat is. The Machinists don’t want us here anymore.”

“Oh, yeah! Of course! Well, it’s a bit late to go now, but we can leave tomorrow morning?”

“Thanks.”

They spent the night on the first floor of the inn, but try as she might Rei found herself unable to sleep. Kat’s glowing eyes seemed to watch from every shadow, and from time to time, Ava and Ruka’s screams shot through her head like a migraine. Eventually the thoughts became too overwhelming to bear, and she slipped out of the room and onto the balcony.

The sky was inky black and speckled with bright stars, but Rei was in no state to appreciate their beauty. She sat with her back against the roof edge, arms wrapped tightly around herself, and tried not to think about Kat’s note. _Just for five minutes, _she thought, but her brain didn’t want to oblige, and forced yet more unwelcome thoughts to the surface.

“Hey,” Jared’s voice whispered from the doorway.

Rei didn’t look at him. She wasn’t sure she could, and she turned her face away.

The wooden boards of the rooftop creaked at Jared’s approach. They shifted slightly as he sat down next to her. Something heavy and scratchy brushed against her hand.

“What’re you doing?”

“Thought you might be cold.”

Rei looked down to see what had touched her, and realised it was the blanket off her bed. She took it from him and buried her face in it.

“Hey,” Jared said with a grin in his voice, “you’re supposed to wrap it _around _you.”

Rei’s shoulders shook. Jared’s tone immediately changed. “Do you need to talk or anything?”

“What are you, a flatskin?”

“You can sit here all stoic if you want. But it’s probably not gonna help you if something’s eating you alive.”

“Tech Hunter metaphor?”

“Jared metaphor. Rei, I’m sorry about what’s happened to your friends…”

Rei hugged the blanket tighter.

“... and if you need to be alone, I understand.”

“Don’t go.”

“OK.”

There was silence for a while. Rei slowly uncurled herself and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. “It’s my fault.”

“I’m sure it’s not.”

“It is. Liberating the stone camp and killing Haga was my idea and I forced the others to go along with it. And yet I’m the only one who doesn’t seem to have suffered as a result.” She dug her nails into the blanket, prising apart the fibres. “I shouldn’t have dragged them into this… it was a mistake. All of this was a mistake.”

“Thanks.”

The cold air suddenly became very hot. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know you didn’t. But you’re wrong on everything you’ve said. You didn’t force anyone, they helped you because they’re your friends and they care about you.”

“But don’t you see? That makes it even worse.”

_“And_ that stuff about you not having suffered? That’s bullshit. OK, so you haven’t been captured and imprisoned, but that’s hardly the benchmark for suffering.”

Rei’s eyes were beginning to sting. “And now we’ve all got to leave, and everyone probably hates me, and…”

“Nobody hates you. If any of the others thought we were guaranteed to be able to stay here forever, they were bigger fools than I took them for. They’re just surprised we’re leaving so suddenly, that’s all. But it’s gonna be OK. Pia’s taking us to Flotsam, it’s not like we’re being forced to choose between Holy Nation and cannibal territory without so much as a guide, and in the morning everyone will have had a good night’s sleep and things won’t seem so bad. But Rei, please don’t feel like you’re alone, because you’re not.”

Rei rubbed at her eyes. Kat. Kat was in Flotsam now. Normally the prospect of seeing her friend again would have filled Rei with joy, but now all she wanted to do was throw up. The blood dripped, steaming hot, down her fingers. Jared couldn’t see it and nor could she, but she knew it was there. It would always be there.

_When we last parted ways, she was scared of me. She was scared of what I was becoming._

Rei surreptitiously wiped her hands on the edge of the blanket. She prayed no-one else’s blood was about to be added to the mix.

* * *

Stress was a common part of Iyo’s day, but it was rare that it was caused by more than a sharp-tongued associate making unreasonable demands of him. Now, however, the stress took quite a different form, and it was enough to make him feel like his processor was about to overload. It had been buzzing quietly at a frequency only he could hear for the last few hours, which had made concentrating on his work far more difficult than it needed to be. So instead he had paced, ignoring the annoyed looks Finch was shooting him.

It was getting late now, and the Machinists had either gone to bed upstairs or were spending the evening with their families. Aside from Iyo, there were only three people in the lab; Finch, Sabina, and a Skeleton guard Iyo thought was called Tuner.

As usual, Finch, was trying to push through to finish the report he was writing, whilst Sabina had taken the opportunity of an empty lab to use one of the undesignated workstations. Iyo had no idea what she was doing. As a more or less independent researcher, she rarely bothered telling her superiors what she was up to. All Iyo could see was that it involved bits of cable connected together and the core Finch had blown up a few days prior. He hoped she wasn’t about to cause another explosion, though she was too careful for him to be that concerned. Finch, while undoubtedly a genius, was far more slapdash in his approach than she was.

“You’re going to end up wearing a groove in the floor, you know,” Sabina said now. “Why don’t you sit down?”

Iyo forced himself to stop pacing. “I don’t know how you’re so calm about this.”

Sabina had always been impossible to ruffle. Having her and Finch working alongside each other was like having night and day in the same place. Iyo pulled up a stool and sat down, trying to ignore his loudly-whirring processing unit.

“The worst that’s going to happen,” Sabina said patiently, “is they send a group of bounty hunters to look for her. She’s not much more than a child.”

“A child who murdered an entire slave camp.”

“I didn’t think you approved of slavery, Iyo.”

“That’s hardly relevant to the matter at hand. No matter what her motives are, she’s committed a serious act of terrorism. The United Cities won’t just let that slide, and I’d be surprised if they send mere _bounty hunters. _No.” Iyo rubbed at where his temples would have been if he’d been organic. It was an unconscious habit he’d picked up from Finch. “What if they send Eyegore?”

Sabina shuddered. “Oh, don’t say his name.”

“Eyegore?” That had caught Finch’s attention. He stopped what he was doing and turned in his seat. His eyes, which normally shifted and caught in the light, were suddenly very still and very black. “The soldier drone from the Southern Hive? _That_ Eyegore?”

“Are there any others?” Sabina said.

Finch didn’t reply. It was rare that Iyo ever saw him this unsettled. But then he readjusted his goggles and for a second there was nothing behind the lenses as the light reflected off them. “They wouldn’t march an army across the desert, through Holy Nation-controlled lands and then up a steep mountain filled with Tech Hunters, just to capture one girl. That would be an act of aggression against us… and nobody would risk getting on the wrong side of the Tech Hunters. It’s preposterous.”

“As much as I hate to admit it,” Sabina said, “he does have a point.”

But Iyo remained unconvinced. Organics were endlessly unpredictable, ruled by their emotions, and prone to the rashest of decisions. They were also more than capable of wanton cruelty and destruction. “I don’t think we should be relying on our connections with the United Cities to keep us out of trouble.”

“Well, what would you have me do?” Finch said. “Evacuate the University? The entire town? Drag everybody off this mountain and have them take their chances with the cannibals?”

“You could have detained her, like you suggested.”

“Are you _questioning_ my decision?”

“No.” When talking to Finch, it wasn’t difficult to hit a nerve, but Iyo suspected he’d just hit one that was particularly raw. “And please, don’t shout at me. My processor can’t take any more strain.”

“Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Sabina said from her table.

Sabina’s attempt at lightening the mood only made Iyo wish he could glare. “I’ll turn _you_ off if you don’t watch it.”

“I don’t think that means what you think it means, Iyo.”

“If this is another of your double entendres, it’s perhaps worth bearing in mind that Mr Finch and I are of sexless races…”

“Yup,” Sabina said under her breath, “you know something, I could definitely tell.” She set her tools down and began clearing her workstation. “And on that note, I’m going to bed.”

When Sabina had disappeared upstairs and out of earshot, Iyo scooted his stool over to where Finch was sitting. “I’d have done the same thing you did,” he lied, “if that helps any.”

“You would?” Finch said tonelessly, not looking up from his report. “But you’re the one who seems to think she’s put us all in danger.”

“Even if she_ has _put us in danger by lying,” Iyo said carefully, “I can understand why she did it. To protect herself and things she cares about. Who wouldn’t do that?”

“If you’re referring to the religious statues we put up by the gates, I wouldn’t have called that lying . Just… being misleading.”

“Lying, misleading, is there a difference?”

“I don’t know, do I look like I’m in the mood for a philosophical discussion? I have a report to finish.”

“It’s gone midnight.”

“Yes, and I would like this done before morning, if at all possible. It’s imperative that I write up the findings of those books… or what’s left of them… before some halfwit wrecks them to the point of indecipherability.”

Iyo didn’t respond. There was nothing left in the books that was particularly earth-shattering, but telling Finch he was wasting his time was like telling a toddler they weren’t allowed to play with a wild bonedog. He watched as his associate scribbled down more notes, occasionally flicking between water-stained volumes in order to check something. The report itself was barely started. At this rate, the sun would have risen and set and risen again by the time Finch was done.

“You should rest,” Iyo said.

“I don’t need to. I’m perfectly awake.”

Finch’s assertion was disproven a short half hour later, as a week’s worth of sleepless nights took their toll. He slumped against the desk, nearly knocking the journal onto the floor. Iyo reached over and tugged the pencil from his associate’s limp grasp, then unstrapped his goggles so they didn’t end up making indents in his face. “Bed,” he said firmly.

“Give those back,” Finch mumbled from the desk. “I need to be able to see.”

“Not for resting, you don’t.”

Hivers were light-boned. It took next to no effort for Iyo to pick Finch up and carry him up the ramp to the sleeping area, in spite of Finch’s protests.

“I do _not_ need to be carried to bed like a child.”

“I would dispute that.” Iyo set him down on the bed, leaving the goggles where Finch could find them in the morning. “Get some of this thing you insist is called _sleep_ and resume your report tomorrow.”

Finch, who was already fast asleep, did not reply. Iyo covered him with a blanket and went back downstairs. Hive exiles were a law unto themselves. Without a collective to guide them, they were useless at remembering to eat or sleep on their own. Even after a decade of being hiveless, Finch had never gotten used to it.

Iyo had always found Hiver psychology a worthwhile field of pursuit, and that of ronin princes especially so. Princes were, quite literally, born leaders. Of course there were exceptions, but he had never known a Hiver admit to being defective. It was far kinder to indulge them…

He wandered over to Finch’s discarded journal and looked inside. It was always wise to check. He picked up the nearest book, flicking through it. As he neared the end, he noticed that two of the pages had stuck together with the damp; using a pair of tweezers, he delicately prised them apart. The spread wasn’t particularly remarkable, but a few lines at the base of the right-hand page would certainly stand out to an enquiring mind. Iyo double-checked to make sure nothing Finch had already written down pertained to whatever was on the back of that page, then very carefully slid a metal finger along the spine and tore it out.

He checked over the other books as well, but all seemed to be in order. Slipping the torn-out page into his pocket, he nodded at Tuner. The guard nodded back and stepped aside to let Iyo downstairs.

Iyo had been with the University since the first days of World’s End, and had overseen the reconstruction of the formerly ruined main building, many years before. He had familiarised himself with every nook and cranny, every trick and secret. He crossed into a partitioned area the Machinists used to store rum barrels, and squatted by one of the flat metal tiles. The tile had always been loose, but could only be lifted by twisting it the right way. Iyo lifted it up and set it down beside the indent it had left, trusting Tuner to alert him if anyone tried to use the ramp.

The indent wasn’t particularly large, but it was deep. If Iyo put his hand in, it would swallow his arm almost to the elbow joint. Not that there was any space for his fingers to touch the bottom. In recent years, the hidden space had become increasingly crammed, its contents wedged in so tightly it took serious effort to dislodge anything. Iyo had taken to leaving his private journals in there. Centuries’ worth of musings had claimed most of the available space, but there were torn pages, too, stuffed in the cracks.

Right now, Iyo had some cleaning up to do.

It took him a while to gather the pages he’d torn out of Finch’s books. Out of the eight or so that the Tech Hunters had brought back from their expedition, Iyo had torn out two books’ worth. It was as well that the Tech Hunters were more concerned with adventure and getting paid than with reading the books cover-to-cover. Iyo had always relied on that.

Once he’d carefully replaced the tile, he stepped back out into the main communal area. Tuner didn’t speak, but there was a silent acknowledgement at the sight of the pages scrunched in Iyo’s fist.

He went back upstairs to the lab, looking out for any Machinists who’d woken up and decided to burn the midnight oil, but there were none. He searched the nearby workbenches for tools, eventually alighting upon a soldering iron Finch had been using for the more delicate work on the core.

It would do.

Iyo touched the tip of the iron to the sheaf of papers and watched the golden flames as they danced and curled at the pages.


	9. Reunion

The journey from Flotsam had been a silent one. None of Rei’s group were talking, not even Pia, and Scrap was straining on the end of his rope as if he wanted to get away from his mistress. Occasionally he’d whine and shoot Rei a sorrowful look, as if she’d betrayed him by not allowing him to roam free in cannibal country. Rei knew she was doing it for his own good, but that didn’t make the guilt-trip much easier to bear.

Rei didn’t want to lend voice to the worry that had been plaguing her ever since they’d left World’s End; the worry that even Flotsam wouldn’t be safe, that the United Cities would get their location from the Machinists and follow their trail across the Hidden Forest. She could easily have endangered yet another set of people. Was Moll aware of the message Kat had sent with Pia? Had either of the girls told her anything? The whole situation was a messy one, and if Flotsam was no longer welcoming towards them, they would have nowhere left to turn to.

From what Pia had said, Flotsam wasn’t that far away; half the distance Bark had been from Sho-Battai, if that. It was easier ground, too, and the pine needles scattered across the ground were springy and cushioned their feet as they walked. There was no clinging dust to irritate their skin, or sand that swallowed legs up to the ankle and poured into boots. Birds sang in the trees as they walked underneath them.

It was a hot day, and climbing towards noon. Rei felt herself sweating, but there was little water to go around, and they had not passed any streams on their journey. Thankfully, there had been no sign of cannibals either. She suspected even the pale, painted tribes were not immune to the heat.

The Flotsam Ninjas had built their village in a dip surrounded by steep rocky hillside. Walls snaked around the perimeter, twisting this way and that to make the most of the terrain. Rei stayed close to Pia as they approached. The twins were looking nervous, she noticed, and they had good reason to be, given how Flotsam was filled with Okranites. Rei had been sure to warn Moll she was a Shek, but she hadn’t been expecting a journey to the village so soon, and she imagined Spade and Jared had not been expecting one at all.

A woman standing at the gates looked the six of them over with poorly-disguised distaste. “Who are these people, Pia? And the three beasts? Can you vouch for them?”

“Yeah,” Pia said in a small voice. “They’re nice people. I like them.”

“Hmm.” The guard stepped aside to let them pass. Rei found herself wilting under her gaze, and it wasn’t just from the heat.

“Well, this is a warm welcome,” Jared murmured.

_“Shh.”_

Now they were through the gates, Rei cast her gaze around the village. There were a few small farms by the walls, and a number of buildings clustered around a tree. Then her gaze fell on the small, awkwardly-standing figure who’d been hovering just out of her immediate line of sight, and her heart leapt and twisted at the same time.

It was Kat.

Something about her was different, though. Not the hair, though Rei noticed her head had been shaved again, and not the patch of gauze stuck to her cheek. It was the way she was holding herself, her gaze bleary, her shoulders slumped. She looked ill and tired and thoroughly beaten-down. A little life returned to her eyes at the sight of her friend, and she hurried over. “Hey. Been a while, right?”

“Are you OK?” Rei said in concern, seeing Kat’s thickly bandaged hand.

“Yeah.”

Rei went to hug Kat, but the result was less of an embrace and more of an exhausted falling-against-each-other. Kat clung to Rei’s shirt with her good hand and shivered against her. There were beads of sweat on her bare scalp.

“I never thought I’d see you again, to be honest,” Kat whispered.

“Me neither. I’m glad you’re safe. What _happened?”_

Kat’s breathing started to shudder. She buried her face against Rei’s chest. “Rebirth. They sent me there.”

“Rebirth?” Rei said, but she remembered Pia mentioning the place back in World’s End. “Oh shit. They enslaved you again.”

“Not for long. I escaped. I wasn’t too popular there.” Kat’s bandaged fingers curled slightly. “They didn’t like my attitude.”

_That _sounded more like Kat. Rei smiled, but her smile quickly faded. Under a sudden suspicion she pulled back and pointed to the gauze on Kat’s cheek. “What the hell happened to your face?”

Kat faltered. “It’s nothing.”

“Did they _brand_ you?”

“It’s nothing!”

Kat’s glare was defiant, but her lip trembled. Rei stared at her. How long had it been? Two weeks? Three weeks? Enough time for their lives to completely turn upside-down. And Rei knew that as alone as she had felt at points in World’s End, that was nothing compared to Kat, who’d seen her friends captured by one faction before being captured by another herself, right as she’d thought she was finally safe.

“Oh, Kat,” she breathed.

Kat’s brave facade suddenly crumbled. A sob caught in her throat, then another and another. “Rei,” she whispered. “I want to go home.”

Rei had spent the last few weeks feeling old and tired and burdened with responsibility. Now, however, that feeling was being stripped away. She suddenly became very aware that she was just a teenager, and of their original group of four, Kat had been the youngest.

“I didn’t ask for any of this,” Kat choked. “I want my gran.”

“It’s going to be OK,” Rei lied, as her own shoulders started to shake. “It’ll be OK. You’re safe now, yeah? Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

“They’re going to hurt the others… it’s my fault… I should’ve stopped Ruka from charging after Ava…”

Rei blinked. “She did _what?”_

It took Rei some time to coax the full story out of Kat. The traditionalist Shek part of her wanted to applaud Ruka for her honour; the part that cared for Kat wanted to scream at her for getting her priorities wrong. _What could she have possibly hoped to achieve against an entire force of samurai? Should have left the damn flatskin and gotten Kat to safety._

“It’s not Ruka’s fault,” Kat said in a small voice, as if sensing Rei’s thoughts.

“She left you on your own.”

“Please, Rei.”

Rei stopped. Of course this wasn’t Ruka’s fault any more than it had been Kat’s, or Ava’s. Rei had left them in a shit situation and then bailed with the slaves she’d rescued. If she ought to be angry at anyone, it should be herself.

“We should talk to Moll,” Rei said. “Now that we’re here. Make sure she’s aware of what’s happened with World’s End.”

Pia was still hovering, jiggling from foot to foot. It was the longest Rei had ever seen her stand in one place, and she was beginning to look increasingly agitated. “I can take you to her now if you want, I dunno if she’s busy or what but she did say she wanted to meet you when you arrived, I guess it’s coz you’ve been sending letters and stuff but she’ll know what to do anyway, I’m sure you’ll be safe here, I don’t think anyone at World’s End knows exactly where Flotsam is and you didn’t tell them that’s where you were going, right?”

“Uh…” Rei said, gently tugging herself out of Kat’s death grip. “Yeah, let’s do that. Go to Moll.”

“You know, I bet she’s really looking forward to meeting you. She’s been talking about you, I heard her. Not very much I don’t think, well really she didn’t say anything, but she did thank me for bringing her your letter. I kind of let her think that Iyo was OK with me taking a letter, well, I actually kind of lied about it, but I don’t like disappointing her, you know? So she doesn’t know that bit, I guess I should probably tell her, but—”

“All right,” Rei cut in, “we go to Moll and then we rest, because we’re tired.”

The pointed remark was not lost on Pia. Her face fell slightly and she pointed to a building near the gate. “She’ll be in there. I dunno where you’re gonna sleep tonight, I guess there’s space on my floor if you need it…”

Rei followed Pia into the building, Kat at her side like a shadow. Presumably this was their base of operations, though it was almost deserted. A number of tables had been scraped across the floor, and had been pushed together to create some semblance of a living space. A woman was sitting at the far end of the tables, listening to a little girl reading aloud from a book.

“I don’t understand what this word says.”

“Which word? Pass it here, let me see…” As the woman took the book, Pia bounced into her line of sight and hopped up and down to get her attention. “Ah, excuse me one moment.”

“I brought Rei!” Pia said, pointing. “She’s been really looking forward to meeting you, you know. Hey, Rei, this is Moll. She’s really cool. I told you about her ninja blades, didn’t I? Hey Moll, why don’t you show Rei your ninja blades?”

“Maybe later.” Moll extended a hand to Rei. “Nice to meet you, Rei. Good to be able to put a face to the name.”

Rei stared at the hand as if it was a snake. Moll quickly dropped her arm to her side, smiling as if nothing had happened. “I imagine it’s been a challenging few days for you. You must be exhausted. We’ll find you a place where you can rest.”

“They can share with me and Kat,” Pia said.

“That might be a good idea. If you don’t mind.”

“Oh no, I don’t mind at all.”

“Moll,” Rei burst out, “there are some things I need to tell you.”

Moll glanced at Rei’s face, then down at the small girl. “OK, Enya, I think that’s the end of today’s lesson. Remember to keep practising, and don’t be afraid to come and ask for help if you need it.”

“OK,” said the girl, hopping down from her stool. She squeezed past Lekko, who was staring at her, and skipped out of the door. Rei sat in the discarded seat, rubbing her horns and not looking at Moll.

It was an awkward conversation, but one that needed to be had. Rei wasn’t entirely sure how much Moll knew about their circumstances, or how much she would care. Indeed, she didn’t look especially thrilled to hear about their bounties, or how the samurai might come looking for them in World’s End, but she did nod sympathetically at several points.

“Does anyone in World’s End know where Flotsam is?” Jared said, as they came to a break in the story.

“Not many even know we exist, unless Pia’s been talking.”

“I haven’t been!” Pia squeaked.

“And those who do know,” Moll continued, ignoring her, “have no idea of our location. I think the more religious among us would have something to say if that kind of knowledge was in the hands of a Hiver and a Skeleton.”

“Can I ask you something?” Rei said.

“Ask away.”

“Do you have a problem with Shek being here?”

“Me personally? No. And let me let you in on a little secret.” She dropped her voice a few notches. “I don’t believe in Okran, myself. I think it’s all a bunch of bullshit. But there are some firm believers among our lot. If any of them gives you any hassle, let me know and I’ll set ’em straight, all right?”

“Thank you.”

“But Rei, I need you to be honest with me. I know you kept things from the Machinists. Are you keeping anything from me now?”

“What I’ve told you is everything I couldn’t tell Finch and Iyo.”

“All right,” Moll said, scanning her face. “You can stay. But you’ll have to earn your keep around here. We’ve almost reached full capacity in our refuges, and there isn’t a lot of food. So whatever your skillset may be, you’ll have to find a way of putting it to good use.”

“I understand,” Rei said in relief; back at the University, she’d always felt like she was somehow taking advantage. “Thank you.”

“No worries. Pia, Kat, why don’t you show Rei and the others where they’ll be sleeping?”

“Oi Lekko, are you coming with us or not?” Spade said as they headed to the door.

“Oh… yeah… sorry.”

Rei frowned, intending to ask Lekko if she was OK, but something in Lekko’s expression told her to leave it. Instead she walked with Kat to where she and Pia were staying, as Pia darted ahead like an excited gutter. “Sorry ’bout the mess, I tried to tidy it up a bit, but just kick some stuff if it’s in the way, it’ll be fine.”

With seven people and a bonedog in the storm-house, Rei noticed Kat shrinking into herself like a wilted flower. She understood the feeling at once, and gently took her by the arm. “Let’s go outside.”

They sat on the sun-heated steps, the door closed firmly on the conversation going on inside, and watched the world go by in silence. Kat’s knees were turned inwards, her bare toes scrunched against each other. Her eyes were reddened. From the way she kept biting on her lip, it looked like it was taking all her willpower not to cry. If the roles had been reversed, Kat would probably have an arm around Rei’s shoulders by now and a hand on hers, but as much as Rei wanted to comfort her, her muscles were stiff and frozen. “It’ll be OK, you know,” she said desperately.

“No it won’t. We can’t help them.”

“You can’t give up just like that. What happened to Kat with the crazy plans?”

“I dunno. Think she’s gone now.”

“Maybe she’ll come back.”

“Maybe,” Kat said.

“Your hand, your face, do they hurt?”

“I found some painkillers. But they just make me really tired. I don’t know, maybe I should take them. I’m not sure I want to be awake.”

“You aren’t well. You should be sleeping until you’re better.”

“Not sure I want to be asleep either. I see… stuff… when I close my eyes.”“Yeah,” Rei said quietly, “I can understand that.” Forcing her muscles to untense, she reached across and took Kat’s good hand in hers. “Believe me, I know it’s difficult to do. But you’re gonna really suffer if you don’t try and get some rest.”

“I guess.”

“You need someone with you when you go to sleep?”

Kat’s fingers tightened suddenly around Rei’s.

“Please.”

She sounded like a child afraid of the dark, only the darkness was in her own mind. Rei just wished there was something more she could do for her.

The door opened behind them. Rei looked up, half-expecting Jared to have come out to check on them, but it was Pia. She didn’t acknowledge either of them as she stepped past. Her hands were buried deep in her pockets, and as she pulled one out Rei saw the assortment of feathers and other random jumble that was being stored in there. She mumbled something to herself, then put her head down and hurried out towards the gates.

“Pia!” Kat called out, but Pia did not turn around. She looked at Rei in puzzlement, her earlier vulnerability forgotten. “Where’s she going?” 

They took the steps up to the top of the wall in order to get a better view of where Pia might be going. To their surprise, the skinny pony-tailed figure was staying close to the wall, glancing about her as if expecting a cannibal to jump out from behind a tree. Kat hurried along the wall, Rei hurrying after her.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be following her,” Rei said in a low voice, catching Kat by the wrist. “Maybe she wants some alone time.”

“It’s not exactly safe outside the gates,” Kat pointed out.

The pair of them came to a halt at the far wall at the opposite end of the village from the gate. Pia, too, had stopped, her eyes fixed on a small shrub-like tree growing between two large boulders. As Rei and Kat watched, she brushed aside the foliage and knelt at the base of the tree.

“Hi. Sorry I took so long. I went to World’s End again… I got new friends there…”

“Who’s she talking to?” Rei whispered.

“Shh!” Kat pulled her down so their heads were less visible over the top of the wall. “She might hear you.”

“They’re really nice, I bet you’d like ’em. Anyway.” Pia pulled the junk from her pockets. “I brought these for you. I couldn’t decide which were nicest, so I asked Kat. She’s nice too. Maybe she’ll be my friend. Anyway, these are the very nicest ones. So I hope they’re OK.”

As Pia shifted position, Rei realised that she was not addressing the tree, but instead a small pile of stones that had been stacked into a pyramid shape. A string of beads had been draped around the top of the pyramid as if it was a woman’s neck, and a number of rotting flowers had been arranged at the base. With a jolt Rei noticed a number of feathers and shells already stuck into the ground, as if in some kind of ritual. Whatever the ritual was, it was presumably not one the Ninjas knew about or approved of.

“I know you never really liked rocks, but I saved this one ’specially for you. It has a little snaily thing in it. And I got you some shells as well, an’ these feathers, an’...” Pia suddenly broke off. “Maybe… maybe it’s just all rubbish. That’s what Reva said. Reva got mean, you know. After she was really sad, she got all mean, but she’s still sad, I think. Maybe you should ask Okran to help her. I keep asking, but I think he might be mad at me now.”

There was a silence. Pia pulled up a wildflower from the grass and laid it over the little pile of stones.

“Naevia? Are you mad at me too?”

A light breeze rustled the branches of the trees. The wildflower drooped and fell onto the grass. Pia stood up suddenly, her arms wrapped around herself as if she was trying to give herself a hug. “It’s not fair. You were supposed to be here. _You were supposed to be here.”_ Her voice wobbled. “I don’t know what to do without you. Please… please come back. I’ve done everything…”

Pia started to cry. It was a quiet sound, but it carried on the wind. She curled up on the ground next to the pile of stones, the fallen flower scrunched in her fist. A curious bird landed on one of the boulders, tipping its head as it inspected her, then took off again, wings fluttering.

“We should go,” Rei said in Kat’s ear.

Kat stood up so suddenly she nearly elbowed Rei in the face. Her face tight, she turned and strode away along the wall. For a stupefied second Rei just stared, then came to her senses and chased after her.

“Kat?”

“Fucking adults,” Kat seethed, charging down the steps to the lower ground.

“Kat, wait up!”

Shek were not designed for speed. Rei was only able to catch up with Kat because she stopped to take a swing at the wall. “Fucking _selfish_ adults! They’re as bad as slavers, they are… don’t care about people so long as they’re useful…”

“OK, but you’re angry with them, not the wall.” Rei grabbed Kat’s arms before she could seriously hurt herself. “Take a few deep breaths, yeah?”

Kat slumped at Rei’s touch, her anger spent. “They were just treating her like a stupid kid. Moll and Reva and all that lot. But she’s just really lonely… and her sister’s dead… I don’t think she has anyone at all.”

“Her sister?”

“Yeah. I asked her who Naevia was, before. She changed the subject pretty quick.” Kat wrenched an arm free, rubbing her eyes. “And she’s coping with this whole thing by trying to be a child, and clinging to weird rituals and shit… and I bet nobody has even noticed. Coz she’s good at running, and so long as she can do her job, I don’t think they even give her the time of day. Fuck all of them.”

Rei remained silent. She’d seen Kat get het up before, on other people’s behalfs, but Pia’s case seemed to have struck a raw nerve. Kat brushed away the tears under her eyes and glared at the headquarters as if she had half a mind to burst in there and yell at Moll. She was trembling, and it wasn’t just from fever.

“Where are the adults, Rei? Where are the adults when you need them?”

When they’d parted ways in the slave camp, Kat had mentioned how the last half year had made adults of them. Rei didn’t bring that up now, but the thought wasn’t far from her mind. A lot had happened since they’d last seen one another, a lot that they still needed to catch up on. There was no longer any room for childish innocence, and Rei suspected even Pia knew it.

“We’re the adults now, aren’t we?” Kat said, reading her expression.

“I guess so.”

“Yeah,” Kat said quietly. “I thought that might be the case.”

* * *

The Tech Hunters were at the University again, and Iyo’s patience was wearing thin. There was no doubt that they were good at what they did, and they usually came back from their expeditions with something of value, but their presence was never conducive to a productive working environment. There were only four of them sitting around in the communal area, but it sounded more like forty with the amount of noise they were making. Currently, they were loudly discussing whether they’d rather fight one gutter-sized bonedog or a hundred bonedog-sized gutters. Iyo thought of Finch upstairs and winced.

“Really, there’s no need to come here before an expedition,” he told them. “As long as you return with a report of where you’ve been, you’re free to explore wherever you want. We aren’t paying you for anything other than the things you bring back.”

“Well, now you know where we’re going!” boomed the overly-enthusiastic Shek in charge of the group. “Hey Iyo, you should come with us one of these days. Having a Skeleton’s knowledge would be pretty useful, especially with some of the older tech that’s lying around…”

Iyo looked at her for a moment, scanning her face, then relaxed. She didn’t know anything. Just another loud-mouthed adventurer with a great stack of foolhardiness and little intellect.

“Well, you’re like, thousands of years old right?” the Tech Hunter pressed.

“Skeletons have to reset themselves from time to time. Things start breaking if we hold on to too much memory… usually our minds.”

“Oh.” The Tech Hunter sounded disappointed. “Well, you’re really smart anyway. I bet you’d be useful.”

“I think I’d be more useful to Mr Finch,” Iyo said gravely. He didn’t mention that he’d done his fair share of adventuring back in the days when the Machinists had been a loosely organised rabble of scientists. He’d made some decidedly unwise decisions back then in his pursuit of knowledge. Still, his forays into the holy lands had brought him insight, in more ways than one. He didn’t regret them.

“Can people _please_ keep the noise down!” Finch yelled through the floor. “And Iyo, I asked you to help me with the core! Stop chattering with the noisemakers!”

Maybe he _did_ regret them.

“So, the Leviathan Coast,” Iyo said, doing his best to ignore the increasingly irritated Finch. “Do you have acid rain protection?”

“Oh. Did we need it?” said another Tech Hunter, a young, fresh-faced human.

“It’s recommended if you don’t want to melt,” Iyo said gravely. The boy stared at him blankly, and he waved a hand towards the door. “Any non-arid coastal region carries a risk of acid rain. Go and get some protective clothing before you set off. Not you,” he told the Hiver in the group, who had made to follow the human, “you’re a Hiver.” _And a prince at that, you should know better._ “You can _swim_ in acid and be fine.”

“Oh.”

Iyo turned to the fourth member of the group, another human. This one was, thankfully, wearing a straw hat and a leather coat, with a good solid pair of boots. “Have you been out that way before?”

“No, but I read Finch’s notes on the place, and took his advice and read Lam’s survival guide as well,” the man replied. “So I know to watch out for the leviathans. Do you reckon travelling in a pack of four is pushing it, or should we spread out and walk in pairs?”

If only one person survived the expedition, Iyo thought, it was going to be this guy. “Stay away from them completely if you can. They’re the size of small mountains, so they should be difficult to miss. Besides, leviathans aren’t the only threats. There are gutters in those parts, so you won’t want to get too strung out.”

“Got it. Thanks.” The man took a book out of his pocket, wrote something in the margin, then closed it and returned it to his pocket. The Hiver, meanwhile, was looking terrified at the mention of gutters. Iyo wished Tech Hunters did their research before they signed up for expeditions.

_Foolish organics._

“I’ll see you all back here in a few weeks,” he said, almost certain that he wouldn’t.

When the group had finally left, Iyo returned to Finch’s lab. Finch was waiting with arms folded and a scowl on his face. “How long does it take for one group of idiot adventurers to get ready? I could hear their inane conversation from up here.”

“Yes, well, sorry about that. Maybe they’ll bring back something interesting.”

“If they even manage to get past the gates without dying for some idiotic and entirely preventable reason,” Finch muttered.

“Do you still want my help with the core?”

“Only if you’re not too busy,” Finch said snippily.

Iyo restrained himself with great difficulty. There was no point in picking fights. “I’m not busy anymore. What do you want me to do?”

Even with an ancient core for comparison, it took a great deal of patience and a good eye for detail to replicate everything to the level of precision required. On a good day Finch was capable of both those things, but the arrival of the Tech Hunters had sorely tested his patience, and on several occasions Iyo had to grab his arm to stop him making a careless mistake that would cause the core to blow up in their faces. As time wore on and Finch’s accuracy only worsened, Iyo decided it was time to call it a day and force his associate to take a break.

“Remind me who’s the one in charge here?” Finch complained as Iyo guided him away from the workstation and down the stairs to the communal area.

“Yes, well, you can’t be in charge if you’ve burned yourself out, can you?”

“I still haven’t finished the report. And my calculations…”

“And when did you last eat?”

“Some of us have more important things to do than satisfying our stomachs.”

“The only person around here who _that_ applies to,” Iyo said, “is me. I think you need a few minutes away from this place. It’s only making you more irritable than usual.”

“I am _not_ being irritable…”

Iyo steered Finch out of the door. “Change of scene. Good for the mind.”

“I could have you replaced with someone who actually does what I ask of them,” Finch muttered, “and leaves me to work in peace.”

“Believe me, you wouldn’t want a nodding yes-man for an assistant.”

“I might,” Finch muttered.

At this time of day, it wasn’t much of a struggle to find an empty bar. The bar they found themselves in was one of the less popular ones, and it was clear from the dust under the tables that the barkeep didn’t take particular pride in the place, but it was quiet enough. Iyo brought Finch a bowl of rice and sat down opposite him. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you somewhere the other Machinists weren’t going to eavesdrop.”

Finch twitched. “If this is about the Shek girl with the missing horns—”

“No,” Iyo said. It was only half a lie. “Look, I’m worried about you, all right? I think you’re spreading yourself too thin and you’re starting to crack. You can’t work on yet another thesis, write up a detailed report, _and_ rebuild a core from scratch. There’s an entire team of scientists here. Let some of them take on the workload.”

“I don’t need anyone else to take on the workload. I’m the one in charge, damn it.”

“Listen,” Iyo said carefully. “The stress levels you’re putting yourself under — not to mention those of us who have to work with you — are starting to get pretty high. And say what you want about not needing anyone’s help, you’re forcing yourself to work against your own nature here.”

“Against my own nature? My _very existence_ is against my own nature!”

“Would you mind not shouting at me, please? The pitch is rather jarring.”

“My _nature_ is to be in a hive,” said Finch, lowering his voice to a hiss. “To have that constant sense of connection to everyone else, the knowledge that you’re all working towards a common goal, to be surrounded and part of that collective. Not an individual in a group, but a gear in a machine. That is my _nature._ There is nothing _natural_ in what I am, a hiveless.”

There was a silence. They’d never spoken about the Hive before, and whenever Iyo had asked questions, Finch had promptly changed the subject. Iyo was glad Finch couldn’t see his surprise.

“We’d be your hive,” he said finally. “If you’d let us.”

“It’s not the same. You’re a Skeleton. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

Iyo ignored the jab. “I know you don’t like the other Machinists, so let’s take them out of the equation for the sake of argument. Why don’t you give me more to do? I already go through what the Tech Hunters bring back, so I could write the reports for you. It’d give you more time for your theorising. Remember you have to eat and sleep and I don’t.”

“If you’re that desperate to write the reports,” Finch said, “then go ahead.”

Iyo hadn’t expected it to be as easy as that. “So you’re admitting you need help?”

“I — no! I’m perfectly capable. But as you say, it’d give me more time for working on theories. Sabina keeps challenging them and I need good counterarguments.”

“Ah yes, Sabina. I thought she might have something to do with it.” Iyo steepled his hands and watched as Finch ate.

“Why are you staring at me?” Finch demanded.

“I just wondered if you were going to thank me.”

It was a tongue-in-cheek remark, but Finch stopped eating long enough to look at him. “I appreciate it,” he muttered.

Iyo barely suppressed a chuckle. Not quite a thanks, but it had taken them ten years to reach this point. For a moment he almost — _almost_ — forgot the guilt of burning Finch’s books.

_It’s for everyone’s good,_ he told himself. _Whatever the Skeletons may have done in the past, we deserve to live in peace in the present._

Still that sense of guilt lingered.


	10. Drifter

The atmosphere in the refuge that evening was a weird one, the circumstances of their departure from World’s End hanging over them like a thundercloud. Pia was chatting and giggling with Jared, but Rei could detect a lurking desperation in her voice. Kat was curled up on her bed, buried under a crushing weight of blankets but still awake. Spade was silent. And Lekko was sitting in the corner, staring vacantly at the wall and stroking a sleeping Scrap.

Lekko had been acting strangely ever since they’d been to see Moll. At first Rei had assumed she was angry at having been uprooted from a place where she’d felt settled, but she’d seemed OK on the journey. Rei half-wanted to go over to her, but suspected she’d probably get snapped at. So she stayed where she was, listening in to Pia and Jared’s conversation.

“I love Tech Hunters, they’re so cool, d’you reckon I could be a Tech Hunter? How long have you been a Tech Hunter? Coz I mean, like, you’re quite young, no offence, I mean you’re older than me. Are you older or younger than your sister?”

“We’re twins,” Spade pointed out. “We’re the same age.”

“Yeah, but like, you can’t both have been born at exactly the same time, so who is the older one?”

“I hardly think it matters.”

“She’s only saying that,” Jared said with a wink, “because she’s younger.”

Spade scowled, but Pia giggled. “So how long have you been Tech Hunters?” she said again.

“Since we were sixteen, I think.”

“I’m sixteen!”

“There you go. You could be a Tech Hunter.”

“Can I be one with you?”

Torn between amusement and annoyance, Rei watched as Jared pulled out a set of cards. He fanned them out with an expert flick of the wrist and grinned at Pia. “You want to play?”

“I’m not very good,” Pia said, blushing.

“Don’t need to be. It’s all about having fun, right?” Jared settled himself at the table, surreptitiously clearing a space. “Come on, Spade. What d’you say to a game of Drifter?”

“It’s been a while since we played that.” Spade stood up and brushed herself down. “We playing with stakes?”

“Nah,” Jared said, to Rei’s relief. She wasn’t sure she trusted the twins not to try and hustle Pia. “Just a few friendly rounds, right?” He offered the deck to Pia. “If you’d like to shuffle.”

“I can’t shuffle cards.”

“Just do your best. It’ll be fine.”

“Oh, I think I just dropped some,” Pia said, as half the deck scattered onto the floor.

“Want to play, Rei?” Jared asked, his eyes on the cards.

“I’m happy just watching, thanks.”

“Lekko?”

Lekko jerked, startled out of her reverie. “What? Oh… no thanks, I’m good.”

“Suit yourself. Kat?”

“I’ll play,” Kat said, to Rei’s surprise. She uncurled herself from the blankets with difficulty and went over to the table. Rei saw her nod at Pia as she sat down. “I played a lot of Drifter when I lived in Shark. We always played in pairs. So you and me, versus those two?”

Pia beamed as though Kat had just paid her a compliment. “But what if I make you lose?”

“It’s OK, it won’t matter.”

The twins had their heads together and were whispering to one another. Then Jared laughed and bent down to pick up the cards. “Put these back in the deck, yeah?” he said, handing them to Pia.

“OK!”

“And you all know the rules, right? Three raptors gives you three points, three spiders gives you six, three gutters gives you nine. Three leviathans ends the round. You can show each other your hands but don’t let your opponents see what’s on the cards. Aim of the game is to outsmart the other team. Got it?”

“Oh, we got it all right,” said Kat. “Bring it on.”

The game started. For the first few minutes the pace was fast. Jared’s hands were a blur as he laid down cards and took more from the deck. Kat was frowning intently as she conferred with Pia. Chuckling to herself, Rei went up to Lekko and sat down. Lekko didn’t visibly acknowledge her appearance, but she did move up slightly to allow Rei some space.

“You sure you don’t want to play?”

“Yeah, pretty sure,” Lekko said distantly.

“Um.” Rei rubbed her horns. “If you’re mad at me…”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“OK. Well, uh, I’m still sorry about what happened with World’s End.”

“Not really your fault, that. To be honest, we were lucky the Machinists took us in at all. It wasn’t really part of the plan, it was just because of Spade and Jared…”

“I guess,” Rei said, remembering what Iyo had said about helping Tech Hunters.

“Speaking of, I’m not sure those two are playing fair.”

Rei sneaked a glance at the twins. There seemed to be rather a lot of sleight of hand going on, and Jared was definitely doing his best to distract their opponents. Pia was blushing and giggling; Kat, rather more immune to his charms, was nonetheless focusing on her hand and not on the cards being swiped from the main pile. As Rei watched, Spade leant over, whispered in her brother’s ear, and slipped a card into his back pocket.

“You like him, don’t you?” said Lekko.

“What? No!”

Lekko chuckled, very slightly. “It kind of looks that way to the rest of us. I have to admit, he’s…”

Rei scowled at the back of Jared’s head. “A stinking _cheater,_ is what he is.”

“Three leviathans,” Spade said, waving her cards at Kat and Pia. “OK, what’s the final score?”

“Uh… spiders, that’s six, and we got two sets of raptors.”

“Ohh,” Spade said with exaggerated sympathy. “We got two sets of gutters.”

“Better luck next time,” Jared added. “You want to shuffle again, Pia? Practice makes perfect.”

“He’s asking her on purpose,” Rei seethed, as Pia dropped the cards all over again. “He’s not helping her pick them up. He’s nicking them from under the table.”

“Are you going to stop him?”

“Not yet. I have a plan.”

Lekko smiled, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. Her fingers absently traced the outline of the scar on her neck.

“Was it the kid?” Rei said suddenly.

“What?”

“The little girl who was with Moll… I’m sorry. I know it’s not any of my business.”

For a moment Lekko’s eyes flared in anger. Then her jaw tightened and she shrugged. “Seeing kids… it’s just a weird feeling.”

“You said you were married,” Rei said tentatively. “Does that mean…”

Lekko twitched. Rei suddenly realised she’d gone too far.

“OK, that was me being nosey. I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”

“No kids.” Lekko pulled up her shirt slightly. When Rei had met Lekko, she’d had old, torn sections of rag wrapped around her midsection, covering more of her than most slaves bothered to cover. At the time, Rei had taken them for bandages, assuming Lekko had been injured in the fighting. Now, she saw the livid red scars that crisscrossed the pale skin of her belly; deep incisions with the imprecision of an inexperienced swordsman, or an animal. The skin was tight and stretched around the scars. “You can probably see why.”

At last Rei thought she understood. “Skimmers.” She showed Lekko her own scar, still not properly healed. It seemed trivial in comparison. “Right?”

“I was the same age as you. Young, reckless… and pregnant. He still stayed with me after all that… I wouldn’t have, if I had been him. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Just… keep it to yourself, yeah?”

“I will,” said Rei, as Haga laughed gleefully and prodded at her guilt. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Ready to call it quits yet?” Spade said from the table.

“I don’t understand,” Pia muttered, staring at her hand as though it had failed her. “We haven’t had a single gutter, and only one leviathan. Maybe I shuffled ’em wrong…”

“Guess you guys win,” said Kat, putting down her cards. “You’re really good at this. Thanks for the game. It was fun.”

Rei got to her feet. “Well, congratulations,” she said to the twins. “You must be pretty skilled to beat a swamp-lander so thoroughly.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Jared said, grinning as Rei shook his hand. “You know Drifter. I’d say we have about twenty-five percent skill. Seventy-five percent luck.”

Rei winked and pulled the cards from Jared’s back pocket. “And a hundred percent cheating.”

Pia’s eyes widened. “Hey!”

“Ah.” Realising he’d been rumbled, Jared quickly let go of Rei’s hand. “Well, at least we weren’t playing with stakes.”

“I’ll stake _you!”_ Pia squeaked, throwing the deck at Jared. “Both of you!”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Jared said as the cards bounced off his horns. “The aim of the game was to outsmart our opponents… and we certainly outsmarted you.”

Pia lunged at Jared across the table. He dived for the door. For a few moments there was a scene of chaos as the twins made their exit, pursued by Pia who was half-angry, half-giggling.

“You can outsmart me!” Pia yelled as the door slammed shut behind the three of them. “But you can’t outrun me!”

Rei glanced at Kat to check she was OK. To her surprise, she realised Kat was smiling. It was a pained smile, if the scrunched-up dressing on her cheek was anything to go by, but it was still a smile. She got up from her chair, hugging herself, and went over to Rei. “Can I talk to you? Upstairs?”

“Oh. Sure.”

The sun had a pleasant evening glow as they went up to the roof, and the stars were beginning to come out. Kat sat in a corner, fussing with blankets. Rei sat next to her. Down below, they could hear Jared laughing as he dodged out of the way of Pia’s playful blows. Her annoyance towards him softened a little; Pia had evidently had fun, even if the odds had been stacked against her and Kat.

“We’ve got to help them,” Kat said.

“What? The twins?”

“Ruka and Ava! You asked me what happened to Kat with the crazy plans. Well,” Kat added, “I guess she’s back.”

Rei winced. She didn’t want to shatter Kat’s hopes, but she’d heard plenty of stories about Tengu’s Vault. “Kat,” she said gently, “I know we had a good run of luck, getting out of the stone camp… and freeing all the slaves… and when you escaped Rebirth…” Kat lifted a hand to her cheek. “But this is different.”

“I don’t see how,” Kat said stubbornly.

“OK, for one thing, slaves are treated like livestock. Infamous criminals, on the other hand, are treated like infamous criminals.” Rei started listing the other points on her fingers. “Second thing, Tengu’s Vault is insanely fortified. Even if we got past the first defences, we’d still have a shit-ton of guards to get through. Thirdly, you said they were both injured. How would we get them across the desert to somewhere safe?”

“It’s possible. You’ve done it before.”

“And half the group died!” Rei yelled. Realising her mistake, she hastily softened her tone. “Listen, Kat. I know you want to help them. But we can’t risk anyone else’s lives. And with just the two of us…”

“Maybe someone else can help,” Kat said, desperation creeping into her voice.

“Oh yeah? Who? Who do you think would stick their neck out for two criminals of the Empire?”

Kat hesitated. “Maybe… maybe Taura?”

Rei squinted at her. Either Kat was delirious, or Rei was out of the loop. “Who the hell is Taura?”

“Oh. Yeah, I forgot. Sorry. She’s Ruka’s ex.” She looked at Rei as if she was expecting some kind of reaction.

“OK,” Rei said, mystified, “but why would she help Ruka if they aren’t together anymore?”

“I don’t know. But like, all Ruka’s family are warriors as well, they might want to help…”

“Kat, Ruka’s been shunned for her cowardice. That’s the way the Shek work. Besides, look at you. You’re a flatskin. Look at me. I’m hornless. We wouldn’t stand a chance trying to convince any of them to follow us.”

“I’ve been thinking about it. She’d probably be in Admag, right? The Shek capital. That’s where Ruka’s from, so… we have a starting point. I want to try. If I don’t, it’s like it’s my fault. I couldn’t live with myself knowing I didn’t _try. ”_

Rei slowly exhaled. “Look, I understand how you feel. I really do. But I’m telling you now, it won’t work.”

“You’re wrong,” Kat said. The yellow glow in her eyes blurred for a few seconds. “You told me it was gonna be OK. You told me just a few hours ago that I shouldn’t give up. And now you’re telling me I should. Was it just empty words earlier, or what?”

“Kat…”

“I know you don’t tell other people how you really feel.” The tears were starting to well now; Kat’s irises seemed almost distorted. “But I didn’t think you’d lie to me.”

Rei was sitting close enough to Kat that she could feel her shaking beneath the blankets, but at that moment it felt as though there was a yawning chasm between them. “I’m trying to help you see the flaws in your plan. I don’t understand what you’re… look, you’re sick, you’re injured, you look like you’ve hardly slept. Let’s leave this conversation for now.”

For a moment Rei thought Kat was about to argue with her. But then she sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’m not even sure why I’m arguing.”

“Who knows,” Rei said, trying to smile. “Maybe Kat-with-the-crazy-plans is on to something. Remember Goren? I’m sure there’ll be people out there willing to help.”

Kat tugged at the medallion around her neck. “I guess.”

Rei scratched an itch just above her elbow. She wasn’t used to being the more emotionally stable of the two, but the last week and a half had hit Kat hard. “You know I’ll always listen, right? If you ever need to talk about anything.”

_Why would she listen to a soulless killer?_ Haga crooned.

“Yeah, I know,” Kat said quietly. “Thanks.”

“Do you want me to bring Scrap up?”

Kat nodded. Rei went to retrieve the bonedog, who was sitting at Pia’s feet begging for treats. The twins were sitting on either side of Pia, a truce evidently having been reached, and were taking it in turns to feed Scrap large quantities of jerky. At this rate, Rei thought, he was going to be roughly the size and shape of a grog barrel before long. She picked Scrap up, ignoring Pia and the twins’ protests as well as his, and took him to Kat.

“I swear he’s grown since I last saw him,” Kat said. “What happened to his leg?”

“He was defending us from the cannibals.”

“Aww, poor boy.” Kat scratched behind Scrap’s floppy ears. His earlier annoyance forgotten, Scrap rolled onto his back and allowed Kat to rub his belly, whining whenever she stopped. Rei tried not to think too much about how Kat seemed to prefer Scrap’s company to hers.

“Do you want him with you when you sleep?” she said, remembering how she’d previously offered herself.

Kat hesitated. “Actually, can_ you_ stay with me? If that’s OK.”

“Oh! Yeah, of course it is.”

Kat smiled a genuine smile, but Rei could see the pain in her eyes. She laid a hand on her friend’s skinny arm. “Let’s find you those painkillers. Then you can sleep for as long as you need. I’ll watch over you, OK?”

“Thank you,” Kat said chokingly. “And… I’m sorry for everything. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing’s wrong with you. Everything’s wrong with what’s happened to you. Come on, let’s go to bed.”

Kat and Rei weren’t the only ones seeking an early night. Spade and Jared had already settled down, curled up alongside each other. They looked almost innocent, a word Rei would not have normally applied to the twins. Pia, though still awake, was sitting quietly at the table staring at her rock collection. Lekko hadn’t moved from her corner. As they went over to Kat’s bed, Rei had the feeling she was observing her and Kat.

“I’m sorry if I keep you awake,” Kat mumbled.

“Don’t be. I spent like, a week sleeping in a lab while a total asshole of a scientist lost his temper with everyone around him. I don’t think you can be worse than that.”

The bed was wide enough for them to lie side-by-side, but Rei could feel herself lying on the spot where the edge of the mattress gave way to the hard wooden frame. She scrunched a blanket into the gap to make it more comfortable, and rolled over so she was facing Kat. Kat looked up at Rei through half-closed eyelids, and shivered. Rei could smell the sickness on her breath, and feel every little shiver ripple across the mattress. It wouldn’t be the most comfortable of nights, but she didn’t care. Instinctively she put an arm over Kat and pulled her a little closer, hoping to share some of her body heat.

“So cold,” Kat said through trembling lips. “But I’m too hot, too.”

“It’ll pass. Just try and rest, yeah?”

Kat’s eyes fluttered closed. For a long time she didn’t move, and Rei thought she might have fallen asleep. But then she muttered and shifted and almost elbowed Rei out of the bed.

“Hey, careful.”

“Soddit a meen’da.”

“What?”

“I said I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s OK.”

Kat fell still again. Her tossing and turning had knocked her pillow off the side, but Rei knew that if she tried to retrieve it for her she’d only disturb her. Instead she watched Kat’s face as it slowly relaxed and lost all the little tensions that had formed since they’d seen each other last. Just looking at her sent a tide of rage and protectiveness washing over Rei. She was too young, surely, to have had to deal with what the world had thrown at her. Then again, Rei was beginning to feel the same way about herself.

_Except you’re not as innocent as she is,_ Haga said with a cruel laugh.

_Shut up._

Haga melted back into the shadows. Rei held Kat more tightly, as if to protect her from… what? From a dead man?

From _herself?_ For a second blood welled under her fingers, soaking Kat’s shirt and leaving Rei’s hands hot and slippery. Then it was gone, and Kat peacefully slept on, oblivious to whatever had just happened.

It took Rei a long time to go to sleep. As she was drifting off, she was dimly aware of the main light being turned out, and Pia getting into bed. Still a candle burned somewhere in the room, and shadows leapt at the walls as it was brought towards them. Rei closed her eyes. She didn’t see a gentle hand placing the pillow back under Kat’s head, but she sensed it, just as she sensed the same hand readjust her own slipping blanket. The comforting presence lingered a little while by their bed, then blew out the candle and plunged the room into a darkness that was oddly soothing, and not at all lonely.

* * *

After the fire, wakefulness felt like immersion in a bucket full of ice. Though the heat was no longer searing her skin, Kat could still see the yellow flames flickering over her vision, could still hear Iza’s screams, could still smell the foul smoke from burning flesh. The right side of her body had caught fire again, a fire so agonising she couldn’t move or breathe for several seconds. The painkillers had worn off. The flames were still winning.

Rei stirred next to her, seeing Kat’s eyes open in the gloom. “Kat? Hey, are you OK?”

The air was coming in little gasps. Kat could feel her mind swaying, threatening unconsciousness again. “Dream. Bad dream.”

A blanket brushed against Kat’s knee as Rei helped her into a sitting position. “Deep breaths. Whatever the dream was, it’s gone now.”

“Not quite,” Kat said, pulling her own blanket to her chin. “Still on fire.”

Rei touched the back of her hand to Kat’s forehead. “At least your temperature’s gone down a bit. Hang in there. I’ll get you some water.”

Kat scooted back so she could rest herself against the wall. She couldn’t remember the exact details of the dream, only that it had involved the fires of Rebirth. She accepted the cup of water when Rei pressed it into her good hand, grateful for how cold it felt. “I haven’t woken anyone else, have I?”

“Don’t think so.”

Kat nodded. It was still dark, but the darkest part of the night was past, and through the window she could make out the first faint rays of dawn. In another hour the sun would be up. She drained the cup and set it on the floor beside the bed. “Thanks, by the way.”

“D’you think you’ll be able to get back to sleep?”

Kat shivered. “I’ll try.”

She ended up dozing for the rest of the night, half-aware of Rei’s soft snores and the weight of the blankets. When she awoke properly it was light inside the storm-house, with several of their number already awake. She sat up and stretched, working out the worst of the stiffness in her joints, and rubbed the back of her neck. Rei had been right; she didn’t feel so blisteringly frozen as she’d done the day before, and her head felt clearer. Another day or two, she thought, and she might have made a full recovery.

She eased herself off the bed, trying to avoid the splinters on the floorboards. Rei was still asleep, and sleeping more peacefully than Kat was used to. Kat left her to her slumber and went to see if there was any breakfast.

Breakfast was meagre given the current population strain on Flotsam’s farms, but there was still bread, as well as lard to soften it. Kat helped herself to a slice and curled up on a stool, listening to the quiet conversation of other members of the group. It felt strange being surrounded by so many strangers; people that Rei knew but Kat didn’t. The dynamics had changed, and Kat realised she felt more alone than she’d thought she would.

Realising Kat was awake, the Greenlander woman left the conversation and came over to where she was sitting. “How are you feeling?”

“Better, thanks.” At least the fever was receding. She could still feel the pain in her cheek and hand. The gauze on her face had half-peeled in the night and was dangling against the side of her face. Kat frowned and tugged it off as she ate. “How bad does this look?”

“Should heal properly, as long as you leave it alone.” The woman, who Kat vaguely remembered was called Lekko, paused. “Cosmetically? I’ve seen worse.”

Kat knew that was about as good as she could hope for. She stuffed more bread into her mouth, trying to think past the slab of grease on top and the crumbling dryness underneath it. Her chest spasmed in a cough, a cough which was quickly cut off by the sheer amount of crumbliness. Seeing Kat’s eyes widen, Lekko thumped her on the back, and half-chewed bread shot across the table. Kat avoided her gaze.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to cram in food like that?”

“Dunno. My gran probably did, though.”

Seeing the expression on Kat’s face, Lekko changed the subject. “When you’re done eating, let me take a look at your injuries. That dressing on your hand probably needs changing.”

Changing the bandage was not a comfortable experience. Although it had been a week since the initial injury, Kat’s hand was still swollen and blistered. She winced as Lekko unwound the old bandage, seeing just how unlike a hand it currently was.

“Hold it still,” Lekko said as she prepared the fresh bandage. “Again, this should heal properly if you let it rest. It’ll most likely scar, but it shouldn’t affect the dexterity of the hand too much.”

Kat looked down at her fat, blistered fingers with dispassion. She wasn’t sure she could imagine them ever being dextrous again. “How long before these bandages can come off?”

“A month maybe, but don’t take me at my word. I’m no doctor. It’ll take as long as it takes.”

“You seem to know your stuff, for someone who’s not a doctor.”

“I prefer to think of my skills as more of a field medic’s than a doctor’s.” The bandage wound over Kat’s palm, hiding the worst of the burns. “Patched myself and my husband up plenty of times… and I know how to stop someone bleeding out after losing a limb. I’d never be able to do surgery.”

“Losing a limb?”

“My husband and I spent time with the Hive. Hivers are fragile, and most of the Western Hive villages are in Vain. Full of gutters and gorillos, but the gutters are the worst. It’s not uncommon for Hivers to lose limbs, which I guess is why they’re so big on making robotic replacements. Right. See how that feels. Too tight?”

“No, I think it’s OK.”

“Good. Let’s sort your face.”

“You said you’d seen worse than this,” Kat said as Lekko applied more ointment to the brand. “You rescued escaped slaves?”

“Don’t talk,” Lekko said, not taking her eyes off her task. “Keep your jaw still.”

“Sorry.”

When Lekko was done, Kat repeated the question. For a moment she wasn’t sure Lekko was going to answer, but then the woman sighed and turned so Kat could see the brand on her neck. “A little present from the Trader’s Guild. Tried to help my fellow slaves. But not much to be done, when all you got to your name is some rags and your chains.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologising? It’s them that should be sorry.” Lekko put the lid back on the ointment and returned it to the first-aid kit. “Anyway, keep that as clean as you can. It’s gonna start to scab over in the next few weeks, then you won’t have to worry about it getting infected. Until then you need to keep the dressing on, OK?”

Kat nodded. “Thanks.”

“Oh, and Kat?”

Kat looked up.

“Don’t let that scar define your sense of worth. You aren’t theirs. You never really were. OK?”

Kat smiled lopsidedly, feeling her cheek push at the fresh dressing.

“I know.”

  
  



	11. Spider

The electric torch-post had finally broken not long after their last meeting with Tengu, and Ava had spent the days that followed sitting in near-total darkness. It might have been as little as three days, or as long as a week; with no company and no way of telling the passage of time, the best she could do was guess.

Her eyes had adjusted well enough to the gloom by this point, though she could make out little in her immediate surroundings. She’d had to grope for the bucket to be able to piss, and the cramps in her abdomen and dampness on her thighs told her the monthly bleed had started, but she couldn’t see anything and even if she’d had the means to clean herself up, she didn’t have the movement in her hands to actually do so. Most of the time she wasn’t asleep was spent curled up and shaking with pain and misery and exhaustion, and when she wasn’t thinking about how hopeless everything was, she hated.

Hatred wasn’t something Ava felt very often, but now she latched onto it. She hated the paladins who’d murdered her father and driven her from her home. She hated the nobles who’d thought they could do whatever they wanted. She hated the Vault Warden and the guards. She hated Marisa for capturing her, and Ceras for his stupid comments, and Kuto for hurting Ruka. _Ruka._ She was starting to hate Ruka too, and the realisation horrified her.

_What am I becoming?_ Was the darkness turning her towards Narko? Or had the demoness had her claws in her this entire time? Maybe that was why she couldn’t feel Okran anymore. She’d fallen so far from grace he’d finally given up hope that she could mend her dark ways and had abandoned her.

Voices echoed downstairs. Too despondent to be curious, Ava didn’t bother trying to listen in to what they were saying. It wasn’t until she heard footsteps on the ramp that she realised she knew one of those voices, and it didn’t belong in a prison either. Her lips suddenly felt very dry and cracked, and as she bit down on her lower lip, it started to bleed. _Fuck._

“And you say he’s done with them?” said the Warden.

The familiar voice became more irritable. “I would never get in the way of an investigation.”

“Of course not, my lady… I do apologise…”

The voices stopped at the top of the ramp, but the Warden must have sent guards, because two came marching into Ava’s cell block. She watched as they fumbled keys in the dark, finally yanking her door open and pulling her from her cage. Ava didn’t have the strength to try and fight it. Her deadweight clearly annoyed the guards, because their handling of her became rougher, their fingernails digging into the sensitive skin under her arms. Eventually they came to a halt and threw her to the ground. The light, though not especially bright, was dazzling after so much time spent in darkness. Ava screwed up her eyes, guessing rather than seeing that she’d been thrown right at Lady Sanda’s feet.

“Ava. Caged like an animal, at last.” Lady Sanda’s voice dripped with contempt. “And about as filthy as one, too.”

Ava wished she could think of a retort, but her imprisonment must have numbed her mind. Lady Sanda wasn’t wrong, though. As her eyes slowly re-adjusted, she could see just how grimy her skin was, and though she’d gotten used to her own stench by now, she knew the last time she’d bathed had been a lifetime ago at Lady Sanda’s. “I assume you didn’t come all this way just to gloat at me,” she muttered.

“Bring this one downstairs,” Lady Sanda said, ignoring Ava. “And someone bring the brute as well.”

“Ruka’s done nothing to you.”

“Guilt by association, isn’t that a thing your people practise?”

As she was dragged down the ramp, Ava expected to return to the interrogation table, but at no point was she stopped and forced to sit down. It was not until she felt her handcuffs being adjusted that she opened her eyes and tried to see, and realised that she was facing a prisoner pole. The cuffs were attached through a rusted iron ring melded into the pole, allowing Ava to take no more than a single step in any direction. She clutched at the pole with her fingers, not trusting her legs to continue to support her weight. She barely noticed Ruka being brought in and secured to the other side.

“You two have caused me quite a bit of trouble,” Lady Sanda remarked.

“Oh, have we now?” Ruka said stoically, putting her fingers on top of Ava’s.

Her irrational hatred towards her friend immediately forgotten, Ava found herself relaxing just a little. Ruka was here, and although she sounded almost as tired as Ava was, there was still a strength to her voice that Ava found comforting. In her relief at seeing Ruka again she nearly forgot that Ruka was just as helpless as she was, and that if Lady Sanda had them both together in one place, it could mean nothing good was about to happen. The relief gave way to dread. Ruka must have realised this too, because her touch suddenly felt clammy, and a lot less reassuring.

“Do you even realise how important reputation is to a noble?” Lady Sanda said. She paused as Ruka glared. “I didn’t think so. Well, Ava, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know you’re responsible for rather a lot of… aspersions… being cast on my authority. With that little stunt you pulled with my staff, not to mention the stone camp, you’ve brought us all into disrepute. And as for your friend here…”

The lavender scent receded a little as Lady Sanda moved over to where Ruka was standing. She laid a hand on Ruka’s arm, and Ruka flinched. “You think yourself a warrior, do you?”

“I do,” Ruka snarled, “and a more honourable one than you.”

“Honour? Tsk, I would expect nothing less from an uncivilised brute from the south. How does your honour feel now, knowing you chose the wellbeing of a flatskin over one of your own kin?”

Kinship meant nothing to the nobles; all that mattered was wealth and status. Ava had known Lady Sanda long enough to know she was simply trying to get under Ruka’s skin, and the stricken expression on Ruka’s face told her it was working.

“You seem to care for this Okranite rather a lot,” Lady Sanda observed. “Do you think she feels the same way about you?” Ruka twitched, and the side of Lady Sanda’s mouth curved up in a twisted smile. “Or are you just the muscle she hides behind when things get tough? It’s difficult to undo the habits of a lifetime, you know. And she’s spent a lifetime hating Shek like you and me.”

“A snake like you should be ashamed to call herself a Shek. You’re not my kin. Ava is.”

Ava’s breath caught. As dirty and dishevelled as they both were, all she wanted to do was throw her arms around Ruka and never let go of her. Looking a little disappointed, Lady Sanda wandered over to a nearby table and picked up a small vial made of dark blue glass.

“Let’s see if she cares about you as much as you care about her.”

“What is that?” Ava said, as an awful suspicion crawled into her mind.

“Come now, Ava. You’re supposed to be a fast learner.”

“No.” Ava’s voice didn’t seem to want to work, and it wasn’t just from lack of use. “You can’t use that. Even Tengu—”

“Most unfortunately for yourselves,” Lady Sanda said, “if you cross one member of the inner circle, you cross us all. Had the emperor not had his duties to attend to, he may even have stayed to watch.”

“No… please…”

Lady Sanda pushed her mouth against Ava’s ear. Her breath was like a perfumed kiss. “I offered you an opportunity, Ava. Employment, a place to live, protection for your friends… It was such a shame you chose instead to attack my guards and murder one of my fellows. And now, you get to see the outcome of those choices you made.”

The dull glint of a blade caught in the sickly light. Ruka tried to wrench her hands free from the pole, but it was useless. Her eyes were white circles of panic as Lady Sanda grabbed her by the elbow. “Ava,” she said, her voice small and shaky, “don’t watch this…”

The knife sliced into the flesh of Ruka’s arm, leaving a thin line of blood. Her face impassive, Lady Sanda released her grip on Ruka’s elbow, which was beginning to shake. At first Ruka tried to keep the scream in, her jaw clenched and her neck muscles taut, but it found its way out. It was a scream Ava had never heard from Ruka before, and one that made her scream too and fight against the handcuffs.

“Ruka!”

Ruka’s muscles spasmed violently. The frenzied movement of the pole sent Ava’s teeth aching and rattling in her jaw, as Ruka’s legs buckled and she crashed to the floor. She was, however, still suspended by her wrists, and for a moment it looked as though the pole and the cuffs wouldn’t be able to hold her weight. All the while she continued to scream, her face pale with pain and breathlessness.

Lady Sanda grabbed Ava’s face, forcing her to look at Ruka. “Do you see, Ava? This is your doing.”

Ava saw. She could feel her own face contorting, but no words came out. Ruka’s muscles continued to twitch and move of their own accord, but more slowly now. With a few final jerks she became still, her scream dying into a whimper and then finally nothing. Lady Sanda’s fingernails, sharp and cruel, dug into Ava’s chin.

“Don’t let her stillness fool you. She can feel everything, but she can’t move.”

“You sadistic bitch,” Ava whispered. She had other words, but only these seemed to want to come out. “You sadistic _bitch.”_

“Well, Ruka,” Lady Sanda said. She grabbed Ruka’s head, yanking it back so Ava could see her face. “Seems you got some tears out of the Okranite. Perhaps she _does _care about you after all.”

Ruka didn’t appear to have heard. Her eyes were half-closed, and kept rolling in their sockets. Her face was blotchy and pouring with sweat, veins enlarged and throbbing close to the skin. Ava could see she’d soiled herself. Lady Sanda had evidently noticed this too, because her lip curled and she let go of Ruka. “You’d better pray it doesn’t start coming out of the other end as well, or she’ll be drowning in her own vomit. Such a pitiful end to a _mighty_ warrior.”

“You _bitch.”_

Lady Sanda waved to a guard just out of Ava’s line of sight. “You can leave these two here until the venom wears off, or the brute dies. Let Ava see the consequences of her actions.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Ava barely registered Lady Sanda walking away, and if the guard said anything else, she didn’t hear. The prison surrounding her and Ruka was beginning to blur and shift, an otherworldly blend of noise and silence and movement and stillness with streaks of bluish light from electric torches. Everything seemed to wash over her in waves; the blinding-yet-too-dim lights, the screams still echoing in the darkest spaces of her mind, the stench of piss and shit and general filth.

Ruka still lay slumped. Her breathing, long but shaky, indicated that she was passed out but still in agony from the venom. A trickle of blood rolled down her arm from her wrist and mingled with the long open wound Lady Sanda had left. Every inch of exposed skin was drenched, as if she’d been submerged in water. Despite the paralysis, Ava could still see a slight tremor in her body. The tremor was like an earthquake, shaking the walls of the prison, shaking Ava out of her own mind, pulling her away from this strange other world. Ava tried to resist at first, but the force was too strong. Eventually she gave up and let Okran envelop her in a comforting shell of nothingness.

It was better that way.

* * *

Iyo hadn’t seriously expected his conversation with Finch to change much, but to his surprise, things had begun to settle down in the University. Rei’s departure, along with the other members of her group, had removed a burden Iyo hadn’t even realised had been there. No longer under quite the self-imposed strain that he had been, Finch was spending less time working and more time catching up on lost sleep. Iyo found himself far more relaxed in his colleague’s presence, and it was a while before he realised why; Finch hadn’t yelled at him in days.

The core was almost complete. Iyo had tinkered with it as a side project, more out of curiosity than anything else, and with Finch’s help, had put most of it together by now. It was, however, less stable than anything the ancients would have produced, and Iyo suspected it had something to do with the chemical compounds they were using. Until they managed to replicate them properly, the core was set to one side, and the Machinists were given strict instructions not to fiddle with it. Iyo wasn’t convinced leaving it in the lab was the best idea, but as Finch had pointed out, there wasn’t really anywhere else to put it.

“Just try not to blow us up,” he’d told Iyo, walking off before Iyo could sputter a response. Given how Iyo was doing Finch a number of favours, the pot-and-kettle hypocrisy had put him in an indignant mood for most of the day. It was only later that it occurred to Iyo that Finch might have been joking.

Whilst some things would never change — Iyo still endured the occasional insult — the atmosphere was still oddly pleasant. It was currently a peaceful mountain morning outside the University, and that feeling of calmness had reached even the busiest of the scientists. The day was warm, the heat noticeable even in the laboratory, and nobody felt like working very hard. Iyo, who was aware of temperature changes without actually feeling them, was less bothered, but most of the Machinists were sitting around like languid butterflies, talking quietly and occasionally picking up books so they looked busy. Finch had donned a lab coat and was mixing chemicals at a bench, occasionally causing loud hissing reactions that sent smoke clouds billowing across the laboratory.

“Need help?” Iyo said.

“What? Oh, no, this is all under control.”

“Making pyrotechnics?”

“They’re supposed to do that.”

“I see.” Iyo paused. “And are they also supposed to dissolve holes in the workbench?”

Finch swore. One of his concoctions had burned right through the bottom of its beaker, and the beaker itself was close to disappearing through the rapidly-eroding table. He grabbed a rag and rubbed ineffectually at the acid. If he hadn’t been a Skeleton, Iyo would have winced.

“You aren’t even wearing gloves. I don’t know how you’re still alive.”

“It’s fine. I’m a Hiver, I’m immune to acid.”

“Immune to_ certain kinds_ of acid found naturally in the environment. Stop testing your physiology against lab chemicals.”

“I said it’s—” Finch stopped, staring at the tattered remnants that had been the cuff of his right sleeve. “You might have a point,” he said grudgingly.

“Skeletons don’t get to live this long without some degree of wisdom.”

Finch’s eyes narrowed behind his goggles. “Are you making inferences on my…”

“Like I said,” Iyo replied, “Skeletons don’t get to live this long without some degree of wisdom.”

For a second he thought Finch was going to scowl and shoo him away from the table. But then, to his surprise, Finch’s shoulders started to shake. He bent his head as if he was hiding it, but a bark of laughter found its way out. “That was pretty good. You should make jokes more often.”

_I do, and you hate them._ Aloud Iyo said, “I don’t think many people appreciate the Skeleton sense of humour. I hear it’s too dry for most.”

Finch smiled slightly. Like all Hivers, his teeth were pointed, and small like a child’s. Iyo, who wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Finch smile before, stared. “At least you don’t find it hilarious that humans have feet.”

“I find it more hilarious that Hivers are somehow able to get by without them.”

“When you two are done flirting,” Sabina called from across the room, “I could use Iyo’s assistance on identifying this blueprint.”

“Flirting?” said Finch.

Iyo patted him on the shoulder. “That’s the human sense of humour for you.”

He was about to go and help Sabina when there was the sound of running footsteps on the ramp. A Tech Hunter stumbled into the lab, red-faced and breathless, as the Machinists looked around to see what was causing the disturbance.

“There’s some people at the gates,” he panted. “Say they want to speak to whoever’s in charge. I said I’d pass the message on.”

“People?” Iyo said, immediately on guard. “What kind of people?”

“A lot of them.”

“What _kind?”_

“Um. United Cities, I think.”

The Tech Hunter’s words seemed to drain all the heat out of the room. Iyo looked at Sabina, whose lips were rounded in a perfect O shape, and back at Finch, who was staring back at him. The liquid in the test tube he was holding was beginning to bubble, and he slowly set it down in its rack. “A lot of them, you say?”

“Yeah. Um. The main guy, he’s scary. I don’t think we should keep him waiting.”

“What does he look like?” Iyo said, a nasty suspicion forming in his mind.

“He’s a bugman… I mean, a Hiver. And not like the normal kind. I… I think someone should talk to him.”

The last of the colour drained from Sabina’s face. “Eyegore,” she whispered.

Nobody spoke, but everyone in the lab was thinking the same thing. If Eyegore was really here in World’s End, nothing was going to stand between him and whatever it was he wanted.

Iyo realised a decision would have to be made.

“I’ll go,” he said.

“You can’t go, you’re not—” Finch began, but Iyo held up a hand. To his surprise, Finch immediately fell silent.

“Let the Skeleton do this. I advise you organics stay put and not do anything that’ll jeopardise the University. None of you know anything, you’re just scientists trying to make the world better. The United Cities isn’t going to harm the people who are providing them with research, so don’t panic and just continue doing what you were doing. Understood?”

Iyo was halfway to the ramp when Finch grabbed him by the arm. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Feeling Finch’s hand shake, Iyo came to a stop. “Honestly? Nor do I. But Skeletons have one distinct advantage over organics.”

“Which is?” Finch demanded.

“They can’t torture me for whatever information they want. Go back to what you were doing. Like I said, I’ll take care of this.”

He didn’t look at Finch as he shook off the hand and went downstairs. He tried not to think too much about his instructions to the Machinists either, and fervently hoped he had given them the correct advice. The noonday sun blazed above the mountains, no longer a warm, pleasant light but an inferno.

It was a long walk to the gates.

Iyo had never met Eyegore in the flesh, but he’d heard enough stories coming out of the United Cities. The Southern Hive were far more bloodthirsty than the Western Hive, their soldiers conditioned to kill anything that wasn’t one of their own. Iyo could see that instinct in Eyegore’s expression, and found himself taking a few involuntary steps back. The Tech Hunter guards looked as though they desperately wanted to do the same.

“You wanted to speak to the leader of the Machinists?” Iyo said.

“Leader.” Eyegore’s voice was deep and grunting. “Where no-horns?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re referring to. If you’d explain—”

Eyegore shoved the guards aside, and as if on a signal, the rest of his men pushed through the gates. It was a blatant act of aggression, but the guards weren’t equipped to take on a small army, and were mostly just standing about looking scared. Iyo counted the number Tengu had sent after Rei, and thanked the stars that Rei had escaped when she could.

“Where Shek girl? Eyegore want Shek girl. Eyegore kill.”

“Right, right,” Iyo said hastily. “Well, there are plenty of Tech Hunters who are Shek—”

“Not Hunter. Eyegore want slave. Eyegore kill slave.”

“There’s no-one here that matches that description—”

“Eyegore find.”

“Yes, but not here. We haven’t seen her.”

“Tin man leader?”

“That’s right,” Iyo said. “I’m the leader.”

There was a short silence. Eyegore’s beady black eyes scanned Iyo, sizing him up. Finally he muttered, “Tin man lie.”

The soldiers drew their swords. Iyo automatically put his hands in the air. “I’m not lying.”

“Eyegore thought leader was westerner.”

_Shit._

“I think you’ll find you’re mistaken. He’s my assistant.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

“Eyegore not mistaken!” Eyegore bellowed, so loudly Iyo felt his circuits jam for a second. “Eyegore make no mistake! Eyegore sent to find westerner. Not stupid tin man. Eyegore kill tin man.”

One of the soldiers standing just behind Eyegore motioned to the rest of the squad. Half the group split off from the rest, their swords still drawn as they hurried off in the direction of the University. Too late, Iyo realised he had condemned them all, and all because he’d been trying to protect Finch and the rest. “If you kill any of us, you’ll make an enemy of the Tech Hunters…” But he knew the words were lost on Eyegore. Eyegore had been sent to kill. Eyegore did not care for the aftermath.

_I should have known they wouldn’t have sent Eyegore for anything diplomatic. This is my fault._

“Tin man move,” Eyegore said.

Iyo moved, a dozen swords pointing at his back as he did so. They walked back towards the University, where the Machinists were being forced outside at swordpoint. Iyo saw Sabina among their number, as well as some of the more junior scientists, but of Finch there was no sign. He watched as the frightened scientists huddled together, looking at Iyo as if hoping he would be able to extricate them from this situation.

“Where slave girl?” Eyegore demanded.

“What makes you think we’d know?” Sabina demanded, her voice shaking.

“Your leader. World’s End leader also.” A pause. “Where leader?”

As one, the Machinists turned to look back at the University. A figure in samurai armour was staggering down the ramp, screaming and clutching at his face. When he came closer, Iyo saw that his skin was melting, his cheek fizzling away, his eye already nothing more than a ruptured sac. At the sight of the samurai, one of the Machinists doubled up and threw up into the scrubby mountain grass.

“The bastard!” screamed the samurai, charging straight past Eyegore.

Apparently unmoved by the man’s horrific injuries, Eyegore simply stood and waited. A few minutes later there was the sound of a scuffle up above, and Finch came down the ramp, flanked by two more soldiers. One was gripping her injured arm tightly, and the other had a hole in his breastplate where more acid had been thrown at it. Despite the fact Finch was now unarmed, they seemed reluctant to touch him.

“You leader,” Eyegore said. “Where girl?”

“Not here,” Finch said shakily, “as you can see after you had my entire staff dragged outside.”

“Where girl?”

“I don’t know.”

“Give Eyegore girl.”

“Like I said, she’s not here.”

There was another pause. Eyegore looked over the terrified Machinists, then at Iyo, then back at Finch. Finally he shrugged. “Eyegore kill.”

“No—”

Eyegore gestured violently in Finch’s direction. For a horrible second Iyo thought they were about to kill Finch on the spot, but the samurai simply grabbed him by the arms. Eyegore strode forward, and with one practised motion that showed he’d done this a thousand times before, plunged his sabre into Sabina’s chest.

There was no scream from Sabina, though several of the Machinists screamed. As the sabre was pulled out she plunged forward, crashing into the dirt as blood pooled around her suddenly lifeless body. A few scientists tried to run, but Eyegore strode after them, felling them with a single swipe of the blade. Iyo thought desperately of the Tech Hunters, but most of them were out of town, and the only one he could see was Tuner, who’d been forced out along with the rest of the Machinists. As Iyo watched, Tuner lunged forward with sword raised, but Eyegore turned and lazily swatted away the blade. He plunged his own sword into Tuner’s metallic chest, sending casing flying, and pulled out a processor that was tangled in cables and slicked in oil. Tuner folded, and Iyo knew at once that the guard was dead. A Skeleton could exist — though not truly live — without its head, but none could survive without their processor.

“Stop!” Finch screamed. “We don’t know where she went, she isn’t here, stop killing us!”

But it was too late. Most of the Machinists now lay slain, surrounded by blood and oil. Iyo stared at the carnage, then back at Finch. Finch’s formerly white lab coat was spattered with blood, and his goggles were askew. Behind the goggles, his eyes were blacker than Iyo had ever seen them.

“Leader no leader,” Eyegore grunted.

“Remember our orders, sir,” one of the samurai said, nervously licking his lips.

“Graargh!”

“Yes, sir!” The words came out as a squeak.

_This is no sir,_ thought Iyo, _this is a monster._

The family who owned the bath-house had come out to see what all the noise was about. Their eyes widened as they saw the bloodshed, and scooping up their children, they made a run for the gates. Eyegore saw, and with an incoherent battle scream chased down his quarry.

_“No!”_

Finch tried to wrench himself free of the samurai holding him, but a nudge of a nodachi against his side kept him still. They could only watch as the mother fell, landing on the screaming baby, whose screams abruptly died. The father stopped, the stricken expression on his face meeting him in death as his own body toppled. One of the older children, the only survivor of the initial onslaught, stood and stared at her parents’ corpses.

_Run,_ thought Iyo desperately, but the daughter’s reaction times were too slow. A sword stabbed her in the ribs, not Eyegore’s but another soldier’s, and she went down. Seeing that she was still twitching, the soldier brought his nodachi down through her face, pulverising her skull. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Finch had slumped at the sight of the massacre, and was no longer trying to fight. Iyo knew exactly what was going through his mind. The Machinists had done little to deserve their fate, but the family had been truly innocent.

For the briefest of seconds, a memory stirred that should have been wiped on a reset. Organics weren’t the only creatures capable of such brutality. The Skeletons had been too, back in the chaos age…

The soldiers fanned out and began to move through the town, though several of the soldiers remained behind to guard Finch and Iyo. Anyone they ran into was put to the sword, whether young or old, complacent in harbouring Rei or not. The acrid tang of smoke filled the air as houses and businesses and everything in between began to burn. A few of the soldiers had gone back into the University and were carrying out various books and anything else that looked valuable. They made several trips back and forth, dumping the stolen items on the grass near the pile of corpses.

_All that history, _thought Iyo. _All that history, and there will be nothing for future generations to learn from._

He realised Finch was trying to get his attention. They made eye contact, and Finch mouthed something. Iyo had never been good at lip-reading; having no lips himself, he’d always struggled to understand the mechanics of organic speech production. But from Finch’s desperation, he thought he could hazard a guess.

A wave struck them.

Iyo had been expecting it; his samurai guards had not. He still found himself being thrown backwards by the force of the explosion, his circuits buzzing noisily as his vision tried to right itself. He picked himself up from the ground, the world still shaky, and he realised the blast must have dislodged a camera in his head. Finch was still lying dazed on the ground. Iyo pulled him up and propelled him away before the guards could recover.

“We have to go.”

“The core…” Finch said faintly.

“Maybe leaving it in the lab wasn’t such a bad idea after all.” Iyo had hold of Finch’s sleeve and was tugging him along as if he was a child. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”

“Iyo…”

“Eyegore kill tin man,” said a voice from behind them.

Iyo looked down. The tip of a sabre, black with oil, protruded from his chest. He didn’t need to hear the panic in his circuits to know the sword had punctured his processor. He looked back at Finch, who was staring at the wound as though he could not believe what he was seeing.

“For what it’s worth,” Iyo told him, “I’m sorry.”

The world faded into oily nothingness.


	12. Smoke

For the first time since escaping Bark, Kat felt oddly at peace.

The fever had taken its time to run its course, but to Kat’s relief, it had finally broken. The whole time she’d been sick, she’d had a nagging fear in the back of her mind that it would only worsen, just as Ruka’s injury-induced fever had. The burns still hurt, but she’d adjusted the dose of painkillers, striking the right balance between pain and exhaustion. It was the best way to stay active and productive, and with everything Flotsam was doing for them, Kat wanted to be useful.

“Careful with those stems,” Lekko said to her. “You want to cut closer to the base of the plant.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“And try not to catch the seeds when you cut.” Lekko knelt in the soil, tugging the knife out of Kat’s good hand. “Tell you what. Why don’t you start piling all this up so we can make a start on the retting?”

“We just leave it in the field, right?”

“Just leave it in the field. It’ll make it easier to process if it’s a bit rotted… and it’ll help get some of the nutrients back in the soil.”

“How do you know all this stuff about hemp, anyway?” Kat said as she started throwing the stalks on the ground. It was a difficult task to do one-handed, and she could feel the sweat prickling the back of her neck, but the labour was oddly soothing. For the first time in months, she was doing something out of choice, and not because a slaver was standing over her shoulder shouting curses at her. “Thought you said you were a drifter.”

Lekko chuckled. She bunched up the stalks she’d just cut and piled them on top of Kat’s. “Drifters don’t spend their whole lives wandering. They gotta earn their money somehow. You can only get so far with hunting and foraging…”

“I guess.”

“You’ve seen this stuff before, right? Being a swamp-lander and all.” Lekko grinned and rubbed at the sunburn on her scalp. “Fuck, I need to get myself a hat… yeah, some of these strains are what ends up in your swamp drugs. Shame really. This stuff is more efficient than cotton, and half the factions of the land have made it illegal.”

“I’m surprised Flotsam grows it, to be honest.”

“Like I said, it’s efficient.” Lekko straightened up, hands on her hips as she surveyed the field. “Well, think we’re almost finished up here. We should pile all the hemp together and then take a break. You know, in five weeks or so when this stuff is all ready for processing, I’ll show you how to turn it into fabric.”

“And then we can make it into things?”

“I don’t know about that. You’ll have to ask the smith. She’s the one responsible for managing the resources.”

They finished piling the hemp and stopped by the well for water. The day was hot, but a breeze was blowing in from the coast, and Kat could feel a few drops of moisture in the air that tingled against her exposed skin. Lekko filled her waterskin from the bucket and passed it to Kat. They perched on the edge of the well, a canvas sheet affording a little shade from the sun, and watched as other farmers harvested the fields around them.

“It’s pretty nice here, right?” Lekko said.

“Yeah.”

Lekko must have caught the distance in Kat’s voice, because she put a hand on her shoulder. “I know you want to help your friends. It must be pretty rough. I’m sorry for what’s happened to them.”

“I wish there was something I could do.”

“I understand the feeling. Knowing someone you care about is still out there, and knowing what they’re probably going through, but not being able to do anything.” Lekko stood up. “I’m gonna see if any of the other farmers need help. You should go rest. You’ve earned it.”

Kat scrunched her bare toes against the bristly grass. She wanted a pair of boots, but supplies of leather were currently scarce, and it wasn’t like she really had the money for them anyway. She lifted one of her feet, tracing a finger along the calluses on the sole, and wondered how long it would be before she could comfortably go barefoot, like Lekko.

“Kat! _Kat!_ Hi!”

Kat looked up. Pia was darting across the grass towards her, ponytail whipping from side to side. She tumbled to a breathless halt just before her momentum sent her flying into the well. “I was looking for you, I had a thing I wanted to ask you, you can say no obviously, but I thought…”

“What’s the thing?” Kat said, budging up so Pia had room to sit down.

“You’re probably gonna be leaving Flotsam, right? To go save your friends?”

“I don’t know,” Kat said. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to save them.”

“Well, I wanted to ask…” Pia trailed off, blushing. “I wanted to ask if I could come with you.”

“Oh,” Kat said in surprise. “Wouldn’t you want to stay in Flotsam?”

“Not really.” Pia kicked a loose stone next to the edge of the well. “There’s not really anything here for me anymore, an’ Moll thinks I’m stupid, so…”

“I’m sure she doesn’t,” Kat put in quickly.

“She does. But I don’t care. I just don’t like it here. Please can I come with you? I won’t talk so much, I swear, I’ll be quiet and not annoying or anything like that. And I won’t annoy you with rocks or anything, I just want to leave. Please.”

“It could be dangerous.”

“I don’t care,” Pia said, but her voice trembled slightly. “I just don’t wanna stay here. I don’t have any friends here. But you’re nice, you’re like the closest thing I have to a friend an’—”

Kat hugged her. Pia tensed, and for a second Kat thought she’d done the wrong thing, but then Pia hugged her back with enough enthusiasm to make Kat feel like her bones were about to snap.

“Ow…”

“Oh, sorry…” Pia let go at once. “I got a thing I wanna show you. Before we leave.”

Kat was pretty sure she knew what it was. She slipped her good hand into Pia’s as they made their way towards the gates. Reva, who was on guard duty with Daria and several Ninjas Kat didn’t know by name, scowled at them as they passed.

“Where are you two going?”

“I’m showing Kat something.”

“What? Do you have some stupid little collection outside the gates? Pia, you _know_ you’re not supposed to be wandering about without telling anyone.”

“Not like you care, is it?” Kat said.

Reva’s brow scrunched in confusion. Before she could respond, however, Pia’s hand shot out and grabbed her by the wrist. She struggled, but Pia was stronger than she looked, and the other woman found herself being tugged along with them.

“What are you _doing?_ I’m supposed to be on guard duty…”

“Sorry,” Pia said over her shoulder to the other Ninjas. “I’ll bring her back.”

“Let go of me, you crazy kid.”

“No,” Pia said, with a firmness Kat had never heard from her before. “Not when you talk to me like that.”

They made their way around the edge of the wall to the shrub. Up close, Kat could see just how intricate Pia’s memorial was. Small, matching stones had been arranged in a semicircle in front of the marker, and the name _Naveya_ had been spelled out in clumsy shells.

“What the fuck?” Reva said in disbelief.

Pia let go of her wrist with a scowl. “I got Moll to show me how to write a bit. Just so I could write that. Thought you’d wanna see it, coz I’m leavin’ this place with Kat an’ Rei an’ all that lot. They’re my friends now. Don’t touch it!” she screamed suddenly, as Reva stretched out a hand towards the shells. “You’re mean, you ruin everything, _don’t touch it!”_

“Pia.” Kat stretched out her hands, trying to stop Pia from hitting Reva. “Calm down. She’s not ruining it.”

Pia stopped. Wincing at the bruises Pia had inflicted, Reva tweaked the last shell. The letters now spelled _Naevia._ “Good try,” she mumbled, “but you got a few of the letters wrong.”

“Oh.”

Reva stood up. “I didn’t know you’d made this.”

“You never asked.”

“Yeah. I guess not.”

“She might have been your friend,” Pia said, “but she was my sister and I loved her too.”

“I know.”

“But… but I’m not gonna be here anymore. I hope she doesn’t mind. You promise to keep on visitin’ her, right? She might get lonely…”

Reva looked away, her breathing suddenly shaky. “I’m going back to my post.” Before either of them could call her back she was gone, striding off with a purposefulness that almost masked the trembling in her shoulders.

“She didn’t like it,” Pia said quietly as Reva left.

“No.” Kat squeezed Pia’s hand. “I think she did.”

They stayed out there a few more minutes, listening to the breeze in the trees and the cawing of birds in the sky. The air smelled fresh, with the faintest hint of smoke. Pia rubbed at her eyes and turned to Kat with a watery smile.

“Let’s go back.”

Reva did not look at either of them as they returned to the village. Her eyes were slightly red and she was staring down at the ground. Daria shot them a curious glance but did not comment. The other Ninjas had left the immediate vicinity of the gates and were up on the walls looking at something in the distance.

“I wasn’t gonna tell her, you know,” Pia said. “I always thought she might smash it up. But… since I’m not gonna be here anymore, I thought someone should know about it. And she was friends with my sister, even if she didn’t like me.”

“What happened to your sister… if you don’t mind me asking?” Kat asked curiously.

“She died fighting paladins. It was the way she’d have wanted to go. But I still miss her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nobody ever told me they were sorry before. Am I supposed to say something back?”

“You know, I’m not even sure myself.”

“Oh. OK. Ooh look, there’s Rei! Should we go say hi?”

Kat caught Pia’s arm before she could go running off. “I think maybe not.”

“Why not?”

Rei was sitting on the edge of the well Kat and Pia had been perched on just a few minutes before. She wasn’t alone, either. Jared was sitting next to her, and from the way their heads were down and their hips were angled towards one another, they were having a conversation Kat didn’t want to interrupt.

“Ohh,” Pia said disappointedly. “He likes her, right?”

“I think so. Sorry.”

“And she likes him too?”

“Looks that way.”

Pia’s face fell, then brightened just as suddenly. “Does this mean we can tease her?”

Kat looked back at Rei. She was smiling and looked almost genuinely happy for once, though Kat could detect a slight awkwardness in her manner. Given her previous experiences, it was hardly surprising. “No, I don’t think we should. This is probably weird enough for her as it is.”

“Can we tease _him?”_

“I think his sister will have that covered. Come on, let’s go back to the refuge.”

But before they could go back, there was a shout from the nearby wall. Kat looked up, vaguely recognising the frantically gesturing shape as Tass, one of the wall guards. He was beckoning for them to come and join them. “You lot! Come and look at this!”

Kat hadn’t really spoken to Tass before. All she knew about him was that Moll had him stationed up on the walls as a lookout. With this in mind, she expected to see a swarm of cannibals in the distance as she climbed the sun-heated steps to the top of the wall. The metal was hot under her feet, and once again, she thought longingly of her old boots.

“What is it?” she said.

Tass pointed. Kat followed the line of his finger, but drew a blank. “I can’t see.”

_“There,”_ Tass said urgently. “Look up there. At the mountains.”

Pia gasped and clutched at Kat’s arm. “Kat,” she said faintly. “That’s smoke.”

Suddenly Kat remembered the smell of smoke that had carried on the breeze. The wind must have changed while she’d been outside. Over the mountain range, thick plumes of smoke billowed up into the clouds like an inverse tornado. The sky was darker over there, and a sudden sinking feeling of dread caught at Kat’s stomach. Something was on fire up in the mountains, and she could only think of one thing large enough to cause that much smoke.

“It’s…” she began.

“World’s End,” Pia whispered. “World’s End is burning.”

If World’s End was burning, that could only mean one thing. Ava and Ruka had broken. The United Cities had come calling, just a few short hours from where they now were. Kat turned and darted back down the steps. “I have to get the others.”

Five minutes later they were all assembled at the top of the wall, staring at the smoke curling up from the mountain. Looking around, Kat could see identical expressions of shock on everyone’s faces. Lekko had a hand to her mouth. Pia was in tears. The twins had their arms around each other. Kat’s gaze skipped over Rei initially, but then travelled downward and saw her slumped on the floor, hands pressed against the burning metal. “Rei.”

“They’re dead,” Rei said. “They’re dead because of us. Because of me.”

Kat didn’t know what to say. She stared back up at the mountain, praying that they were mistaken, but she knew in her soul that World’s End was gone.

“Finch and Iyo… Sabina… the lady at the bath-house… they’re gonna be dead, aren’t they? They weren’t supposed to die! How could the United Cities…” Rei let out a dry sob. “They weren’t their enemy.”

“They didn’t know where Flotsam was, right?” Kat hated to ask, but she had to.

“No… I don’t think they even knew that’s where we were going… but they’re dead. They’re dead. They’re _dead.”_

She stared wildly at Kat. Kat could see the anger and hatred boiling in her eyes.

“They can’t get away with it… there were kids there… there were people who never did anything. We can’t let them. We gotta get Ava and Ruka back, and we gotta…”

“I know. We’ll think of something.”

“You had a plan, right?” Rei said desperately. “To go to Admag? To find Taura?”

“Well, yeah, I did, but it wasn’t a great one. And you didn’t like it.”

“Taura. We gotta find Taura. We gotta do something. I just… we… I…”

She was starting to gibber. Heedless of the burning sensation in her feet, Kat squatted down and helped her up. “We’ll find her.”

Other villagers had begun to fill the ramparts, staring at the smoke. Seeing Rei shrink away from the sudden crowds, Jared took her by the wrist and led her away. It was impossible for Kat to get any kind of read on his expression, and she remembered he and Spade had been Tech Hunters. They must have spent a lot of time at World’s End.

_What have we done?_

It took Kat a moment to realise she too was crying, though she barely felt the tears. Desperate for some kind of reassurance, she looked up at Lekko. “It’s going to be OK, right?”

“I think,” Lekko said grimly, “that things are a long way from being OK.”

Dark ashy clouds crossed the sky from the mountains, casting shadows over the ground as World’s End continued to burn.

* * *

The grog wasn’t strong enough. Ceras had drunk what had to be half a barrel of the stuff by now, and it hadn’t even made a dent in his sobriety. As much as he’d complained about how the grog sold in Bark was ninety percent water, he had to admit it; the Holy Nation had somehow managed to create something worse. He set the empty cup on the table, slowly and deliberately pushing it away.

He didn’t know why he was even still in Blister Hill. The girl — if it had even been the same girl — was long gone, dragged away to Okran knew where while Ceras stood at the back of a crowd and watched from a distance. That had been at least two weeks ago. And instead of admitting defeat and heading back to the United Cities, he’d decided to sit and drink, watching the tricorn-wearing mercenaries drift in and out of the bar and wondering how desperate things would have to get for him to go back to that life.

With the exception of his own thoughts, things had been quiet. Ceras liked them that way. The regular patrons rarely bothered him, viewing him as an outsider, and whilst there were one or two particularly obnoxious town guards who tried to proselytize at every opportunity, most just left him alone. Ceras suspected him being male had something to do with it, and felt sorry for any women who had to put up with it. _Narko is growing stronger_ was a common phrase that was hurled at anything the paladins perceived to be out of line, and Ceras suspected that, from the paladins’ perspective at least, there was a grain of truth in there somewhere. There had been a tension in Blister Hill ever since he’d arrived, and through snippets of conversation he’d heard in the bar over the past few weeks, he was beginning to see why.

“Narko herself put that Stone Golem in charge of those darkened forces. She made peace with the United Cities. Why would she do that if not to ally with them, and lead an assault on all that’s holy? Our cities will soon become battlegrounds, mark my words…”

“All this silence from the beasts to the south… it can mean nothing good. With that woman leading them, Narko has them all in her clutches. And those warriors she has… I hear one of them single-handedly killed an entire platoon of soldiers. The Fury, they call him. Absolute giant of a man. They say he can summon storms with a snap of his fingers…”

“Heard the Holy Lord Phoenix himself ordered more patrols to the south. I wouldn’t like to be in Stack right now… though I have faith in the Holy Lord Phoenix, and in Okran.”

Today, however, things had grown even tenser, as grim news had reached Blister Hill from the northern lands. The regulars were talking about it now, in hushed voices as if the paladins were listening in on their conversation.

“You heard what happened, I take it?”

“My brother told me. Can’t quite believe it, myself. This is an attack on Okran’s faithful. They toppled the statues at the gates… Must have been a lot of smoke, for them to have seen it all the way over in Okran’s Fist.”

“Oh, it wasn’t Okran’s Fist. It was the farmers on the eastern foothills. They saw the smoke above the mountains, and they were the ones who saw the enemy patrol. I heard it was being led by some kind of monster…”

“Monster? Ha, I doubt it.”

“The farmers said he was like a bugman, but like none they’d ever seen before. Said their blood froze up just by looking at him.”

At this point Ceras had felt his own blood freeze. Eyegore. He’d heard that name, as had everyone in the United Cities, but few had seen the man and lived to tell the tale. Ceras almost wished he hadn’t lived to tell the tale either. For the briefest of seconds, he was staring down at his wife and daughter lying in the sand, hearing the crackling of flames and knowing that if he didn’t run into the night, he would be next…

The memory only lasted a moment. It took Ceras far longer to start thinking normally again, and by that time the conversation had moved on from Eyegore. Ceras was thankful for that. He listened in more cautiously, keen to know more but half afraid that the conversation would stir dark thoughts he’d tried to bury.

“... it’s a sign, isn’t it?” the man who’d described Eyegore was saying. “The dark blight is spreading across the land, and it’s crossed our borders now. We can’t even keep our own borders safe. It’s Bast all over again. What if they take Okran’s Valley? We’ll lose half our food supplies, and if they then march south to Blister Hill…”

“Maybe you should keep it down a bit. The Holy Lord Phoenix protects us here. Wouldn’t want to get in trouble, brother.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said the man, drinking fervently from his cup. “But still, these are dark times. Dark times.”

They both glared at Ceras, and they weren’t the only ones. Ceras was beginning to think being an outsider wasn’t such a good thing. Uncomfortably aware of how hostile the atmosphere had grown, he stood up. The eyes followed him all the way to the door, and even after he’d put considerable distance between himself and the bar, Ceras felt like they were still watching him.

It was definitely time to move on. Even if Eyegore hadn’t been spotted across the border, the threat of full-scale war hadn’t been hanging over the land like a thick cloud, the holy lands gave Ceras the chills. He tried not to think about what might have happened if Kuto or Marisa had been with him. Hopefully they would be safe in the United Cities, Kuto rejoining the Mercenary Guild and Marisa continuing to exist under Lady Sanda’s employ. Ceras was surprised at how fondly he thought of them. It wasn’t as though any of them had liked each other when they’d been forced to work together.

The paladins on the gates were twitchier than usual, and handled the contraband searches with more force than was strictly necessary. Ceras tried to keep silent and not let his accent give him away as a foreigner, but the paladins’ interrogation of who he was and where he thought he was going necessitated answers. He half-expected to be detained there and then, and the looks on some of the guards’ faces indicated they wanted to, but since he was doing nothing illegal, they simply waved him through. Ceras was not sorry to leave, and as he stepped outside the city walls, he felt a sense of relief that he hadn’t felt since he’d left the United Cities in the first place.

The question of where to go next wasn’t one that Ceras had thought about in any great detail. There was no shortage of world to explore, but only the very brave or very stupid explored most of it. Ceras had never thought of himself as a wanderer; as he’d told Marisa, settling down in Clownsteady had seemed like an appealing option. Now, however, returning to the United Cities and submitting to the nobles felt far less appealing, and he suspected Marisa had been right about Clownsteady being a dump. There would be other cities.

He checked over his map, but nothing caught his immediate attention. With a shrug, he folded the paper back into his pocket and began to walk. There was no real purpose to his walking, but he’d been loitering outside the gates long enough, and he suspected the turret guards up on the walls were getting itchy trigger fingers. Maybe it would be best to follow the river south, and take another look at those little farms that had stirred so many memories. It would still be Holy Nation territory, but Ceras’s coin purse was beginning to feel light, and he wondered if his skills would be of any service, either as a farmer or a fighter.

_South it is,_ he thought, and turning his back on Blister Hill, he set off again in search of his quiet retirement.

[](https://pelandreth.wixsite.com/thewanderersroad/copy-of-10-12-drifter)   
  



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